October 19, 2004

Minebea Co., Ltd. has successfully developed new backlight systems: medium-sized white LED backlight system and RGB-LED backlight system, and will release details at the FPD International 2004 to be held at Pacifico Yokohama tomorrow (October 20, 2004).
Backlight systems are key supporting assemblies for FPDs (flat panel displays), which have recently been used in a wide variety of products ranging from cellular phones to large TV sets.

Minebea develops and manufactures white LED backlight systems for mobile products, including cellular phones, digital cameras and PDAs, and has recently developed two backlight systems: medium-sized white LED backlight systems and RGB-LED backlight systems.

These new backlight systems—a combined development achievement of Minebea’s proprietary optical design skills, ultra-precision tool machining capabilities and high-precision injection molding technologies—have the following excellent performance:

Medium-Sized White LED Backlight System

While current medium-sized (about 6 to 10 inches) LCD modules use cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) as their light source, Minebea’s new backlight system uses LEDs as its light source to ensure high luminance and high efficiency.

Unlike CCFL backlight systems, the new backlight system permits extensive and continuous light dimmering controls. In addition, Minebea’s unique thermal radiation design skills also allow the unit to deliver much-improved LED thermal radiation, resulting in lower power consumption and longer operating life. CCFLs contain mercury hazardous to public health. However, as an eco-friendly product, the new backlight model uses LEDs as its light source to be free from both lead and mercury.

RGB-LED Backlight System

Using RGB LEDs as its light source, this unique optical design technology-based backlight system permits much-improved color reproduction area with high luminance and high efficiency for more applications ranging between mobile and medium sizes (1.5 and 7.2 inches).

The unique circuit design technology-based backlight system also can have color calibration function. In addition, it also drives LEDs under PWM control (note 2) system as well as current control system, and supports field sequential (note 3) LCD units.

Applying the medium-sized white LED backlight technologies to the backlight, it is free from lead and mercury, extends its operating life, and lowers its power consumption.

In addition to the above two types, Minebea is now developing large backlight systems for such applications as TV sets and PC monitors, and plans to place them on the market.

Notes

1. Luminance uniformity: It is the ratio of the maximum and minimum figures of luminance.
2. PWM control: It is the LED light dimming system using a pulse width modulation method.
3. Field sequential method: It is the color reproduction method, in which colors are reproduced in such a manner that red, green and blue lights are sequentially flashed at a high speed using the LCD module that has no color filters.
4. NTSC ratio: NTSC (National Television System Committee) refers to a color TV broadcasting method, and the NTSC ratio is an area ratio of a triangle of color reproduction region realized by a display device with respect to an area of a triangle formed by a color reproduction range of NTSC in a chromaticity diagram.

For inquiries, please contact:
Minebea Co., Ltd.
Masaki Ishikawa
Corporate Communications /Investor Relations Office
Corporate Planning Department

ARCO Tower, 19th Floor,
1-8-1, Shimo-Meguro, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8662
Tel : 81-3-5434-8637
Fax: 81-3-5434-8607
E-mail : mishikaw@minebea.co.jp
URL : http://www.minebea.co.jp