Abstract: A liquid crystal display having pixels illuminated by field emitter arrays. The field emitter arrays may be utilized to illuminate each pixel individually or to be a backlight lamp to illuminate the whole display, whether monochrome or color. A field emitter array back-lighted liquid crystal displays, whether active matrix or passive, provide greater compactness, higher luminous efficiency, more brightness, and longer lifetime than a fluorescent lamp. Field-emitter arrays may also provide light in various colors for the liquid crystal display thereby eliminating the need for color filters which result in duller colors than that of field emitter arrays. Each color filter absorbs two-thirds of the light that it receives. A color filter liquid crystal color display exhibits colors that have diminished chromaticity and purity in comparison to those of a field emitter array liquid crystal display.