DLP® technology is a revolutionary display solution that uses an optical semiconductor to manipulate light digitally. It is a highly reliable, all-digital display chip that delivers the best picture across a broad range of products, including projectors for mobile projection, education, business and home entertainment. It is the only display technology on the market that can enable the world's smallest projectors under .5 lbs. and light up the largest movie screens up to 100 feet. The result is maximum fidelity—a picture whose clarity, brilliance and color must be seen to be believed.

At the heart of every DLP projection system is an optical semiconductor known as the Digital Micromirror Device, or DLP chip, which was invented by Dr. Larry Hornbeck of TI in 1987.

The DLP chip is perhaps the world's most sophisticated light switch. It contains a rectangular array of up to 2 million hinge-mounted microscopic mirrors; each of these micromirrors measures less than one-fifth the width of a human hair. A DLP chip's micromirrors are mounted on tiny hinges that enable them to tilt either toward the light source in a DLP projection system (ON) or away from it (OFF)—creating a light or dark pixel on the projection surface. The white light generated by the lamp in a DLP projection system passes through a color filter as it travels to the surface of the DLP chip. The 3-chip system found in DLP Cinema® projection systems is capable of producing no fewer than 35 trillion colors.

DLP technology is also used in non-traditional projection applications which required precise light steering. These applications include spectroscopy, 3D optical measurement and more.

Learn more about our DLP business.