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Chameleon Liquid Could Replace LCDs
InvisblePinkUnicorn writes "NewScientist reports on a color-changing liquid that could cheaply replace the color components of standard LCDs. According to researchers at UC Riverside, the liquid 'contains tiny iron oxide particles coated with plastic. It is cheap and easy to make, and could also be used in flexible, rewritable, electronic paper.' From the article: 'The opposing forces of electrostatic repulsion [in the plastic] and magnetic attraction [in the iron oxide] result in the particles arranging themselves into an ordered structure, known as a colloidal "photonic crystal". The colloidal crystal reflects light because the spacing between neighboring particles in the structure is equivalent to the wavelength of light. Also, tuning the spacing slightly alters the exact wavelength, or colour, of light that is reflected. This can easily be done by varying the strength of the magnetic field applied to the crystal.'"
Um, it's only fairly recently-ish we've had sub-6ms LCDs... it's funny you mention 8 ms because 8 ms is widely considered the "acceptable" gaming threshold, at least in my research when I was looking at buying an LCD a year ago or so. (Note: I held off until a couple months back, and my current display is 2 ms latency.) Not to mention, the panels on older laptop computers had significantly higher latency, and they were quite usable for basic office tasks.