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Flat-screen TV sets are still quite expensive, so researchers are trying to make the pictures on conventional cathode ray tube screens brighter and clearer. CRTs create the picture with an electron beam that scans across a phosphor coating and make it glow.

Now a team at the University of Georgia Research Foundation in Athens, says that it can get a brighter picture by coating the back of the screen with a light-reflecting layer. The electron beam can pass through this mirror layer to make the phosphor emit light, but any light emitted backwards bounces off the mirror and emerges through…

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