Slashdot Mirror
Polymer 'Muscle' Changes How we Look at Color
New Scientist is reporting that in the not-so-distant future computer monitors, and televisions may utilize a color changing polymer that responds to a current instead of existing techniques. From the article: "Aschwanden and colleagues built arrays of 10 pixels, each 80 micrometers across. The pixels consist of a piece of polymer covered with ridges tipped with gold. When white light is shone at the polymer from one side it reflects out of the screen and is also split into different wavelengths by this 'diffraction grating'. However, a slit above the polymer ensures that only one wavelength of light escapes, giving the pixel its color. The pieces of polymer also contract in response to current, like simple muscles. As they do so, the fan of light-waves is moved, changing the color that is fed through the slits above and out of the screen. Cutting the current causes the muscle to return to its original state."
What this would allow is to create pixels that have colours closer to the optimal recieving wavelength of the receptors on our retina. This would allow a screen to recreate the full human gamut (assuming you could also take photos in that system too...) There is no point in transmitting the entire spectrum shape using this, since the eye can only percieve at 3 bases.
It reflects white light. It works like a glass prism. Do you see people working with prisms getting microwaved to death or skin cancer from UV? There's your answer.