I don’t mean BETTER. That’s a different conversation. I mean cooler.
An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.
If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.
That’s just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.
A laser, maybe, but definitely not LEDs. Vapor/gas lamps produce the narrowest frequency bands possible, because it comes from very well defined atomic transitions (Hz range). LEDs produce frequency bands with widths in the GHz/THz range, while semiconductor lasers can maybe reach KHz if they are really good. So, unfortunately, for this type of applications, vapor lamps would probably still be needed.
Source: I work with lasers and spectroscopy.
Edit: very good idea about using non-visible light!