Inside a cavernous Panasonic TV panel factory in Amagasaki, Japan, GPS guided robots whisk stacks of plasma screens down white-painted rooms hundreds of feet long. After cooking for hours in 500C heat (to fuse pairs of thin glass sheets around a layer of light-emitting gasses), the panels will be shipped to assembly plants in Japan & around the world, where they will be installed in flat-screen TV sets including state-of-the-art 3D models. Panasonic, which began selling 3D-capable versions of its Viera TVs in March, is hoping the visual feature will make consumers take a fresh look at plasma, a technology that has been overtaken by lower-cost LCDs in all but the largest models. 3D looks best on big, low-latency screens that can project fast moving objects smoothly - a traditional advantage of plasma over LCD screens. This article takes a look at a rising threat to this market, caused by shortages of rare earth raw materials.
