Review of the current status of CRT technologies

Color cathode ray tubes (CRT) have been dominating the display market for more than forty years. The unique advantages, such as high brightness, very wide viewing angle, and excellent color purity, makes all other display devices very difficult to compete with. Meanwhile, to improve the performance of CRTs and to meet the challenge of large size CRTs, modifications have been made on all components including shadow mask, bulb design, electron gun design, and yoke design. Basically, the technology improvements can be categorized into two areas: structure and ergonomics. Structurally, efforts have been concentrating towards a flatter faceplate and a finer pitch. These improvements lead to the extensive uses of low thermal expansion shadow mask and higher resolution gun design. An alternative improvement is the introduction of tensioned mask CRTs. In the area of ergonomics, efforts are focusing on the improvements of contrast and resolutions such as the introduction of antireflective and antistatic function on the faceplate. Details will be presented in this ppaer.