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.'"

Comments

lets get to it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of these new technologies that never make it out to the customer. Stop telling me what we could do, and do it already!

Re:lets get to it

[Aladrin]

The ones that 'never make it out' are the ones that are tragically flawed and you don't want, anyhow. Too expensive, too cancer-causing, too impossible, etc.

On the other hand, if you don't want to know the cutting-edge tech that -might- come out soon, you are probably on the wrong site. Geeks tend to value new ideas, even if they are impractical.

Re:lets get to it

[Glith]

Of course we do. New, practical ideas don't come into existence without brainstorming through plenty of new, impractical ideas.

Re:lets get to it

[catbutt]

Have you considered not reading technology sites and just going to the mall, if all you are interested in is finished products?

Magnets

[hack slash]

I remember having fun with powerful magnets and CRTs, does this mean LCD panels made with this new liquid be susceptible to magnetic fields too?

Probably not. Too many electromagnets

[Animats]

It sounds cute, but it's another minor advance in materials science, and a long way from being a new display technology.

The basic problem is that it requires a big array of electromagnets, one per pixel. Fabricating large arrays of electromagnets is expensive; it's hard to fabricate coils using an IC process. And it doesn't scale down well; tiny coils are tough to make. It's also hard to contain a magnetic field in a small space. So electrostatic devices, like LCDs, and emission devices, like plasma panels, tend to win out.

Previous technologies shot down by this fact include magnetic bubble and magnetic core memories. They worked, but they never got either cheap or tiny.

Re:Response time?

[SnowZero]

As opposed to an LCD which truly is at a given level, there is no fade out. Wrong. Go to Tom's hardware and look at any of their LCD reviews. The response curve is not square, nor is it likely to be anywhere near the quoted speed, which is usually describing the best case rather than the worst case. You're also neglecting the common "overdrive" method used to get sub "16ms" response times, which means the LCD takes a long time to actually converge on a level; Contrary to your claim, for video it really is almost never is at the right level, rather it wobbles around it and looks grainy. So, CRTs are still better at response time (in particular rise time) and flatness of a shade, but suck for all the other reasons that CRTs do (size, weight, flicker, etc). It's a trade-off, please don't try to pretend it isn't.

If you want a good waveform, you'll need an OLED. Those can respond in a few ms from/to any brightness level (just like an LED). Once those take off in popularity, they will probably rule the roost for gaming and video, if not everything.