China's BOE has announced the world's first 500Hz LCD panel, made possible by switching to oxide TFTs that will also enable to panel maker to launch an 8K 120Hz LCD panel.

500Hz and beyond
In its announcement published in Chinese newspaper Sina, BOE refers to the 27-inch Full HD monitor panel as 500Hz+ suggesting it can even go beyond 500Hz refresh rate.

It is the highest refresh rate in an LCD monitor panel at this time, handily beating the 360Hz monitors that were launched in 2020. However, it is still just a prototype panel and even though it can be refreshed at 500 times per second a limiting factor will most likely be the response time of the LCD panel.

Is 500Hz really necessary? Well, some argue that we should strive to go beyond even 1000Hz.

BOE explains that the 27-inch 500Hz 1080p LCD panel is made possible by a switching from amorphous silicon (a-Si), which enables high resolution, for the thin film transistors (TFT) backplane to oxide, which enables high resolution and high refresh rate. Oxide backplanes are also used in some OLED panels. 

- "Oxide semiconductor display technology has the advantages of high mobility, low off-state current, simple process technology, large size, etc. It can meet the dual needs of high-quality improvement and energy consumption reduction of future products, which has become an inevitable trend in technology and market development. However, in the industrialization of oxide technology, the instability of the traditional oxide film microstructure under bias stress, light, high current and other unstable problems such as device performance attenuation, as well as copper process and oxide process matching problems, are common problems that need to be solved urgently in the semiconductor display industry," the Sina report said (translated from Chinese).

The same tech has allowed BOE to start mass-production of a 110-inch 8K 120Hz LCD panel.

 Also read: Vizio's new M-Series LCD TV features 240Hz gaming support

PC monitor makers such as Acer, Asus and Dell have not yet announced plans to launch 500Hz monitors.



- Source: BOE, Sina via Wccf tech