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Chameleon Liquid Could Replace LCDs

Posted by Zonk on from the i'm-made-of-liquid-metal dept.

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.'"

16 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Liquid Paper already exists.. by EveryNickIsTaken · · Score: 5, Funny

    And it's called white-out, duh!

    1. Re:Liquid Paper already exists.. by ringfinger · · Score: 5, Funny

      Dude -- You should clean the white out off your computer monitor - then you might be able to actually READ THE ARTICLE...

      --
      21st-Century-Citizen
    2. Re:Liquid Paper already exists.. by ringfinger · · Score: 3, Informative

      Dude - I was making a joke play of the Weird Al line in All About The Pentiums -- about the newbie that had 'white-out all over your screen'. Besides, to be fair it doesn't say that paper would be made out of this liquid, just that it would provde the color/images. More likely is that this liquid would be the coating on the paper.

      --
      21st-Century-Citizen
    3. Re:Liquid Paper already exists.. by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 4, Funny

      I didn't RTFA. I assumed that they were talking about actual chameleon liquid. I was thinking all those "Will It Blend?" experiments had finally paid off.

      --
      It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  2. lets get to it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:lets get to it by Aladrin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    2. Re:lets get to it by Glith · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    3. Re:lets get to it by catbutt · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    4. Re:lets get to it by object88 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Too expensive, too cancer-causing, too impossible, etc.

      I hate it when my new technology crosses that painful threshold between "slightly impossible" and "too impossible".

  3. Magnets by hack++slash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

    --
    To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
  4. Re:Response time? by SilentUrbanFox · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Probably not. Too many electromagnets by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Probably not. Too many electromagnets by mosb1000 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Any electrical current will generate a magnetic field. I don't know why you think you need coils. Coils are used because the field overlaps on itself and there is an additive effect. But the article does not say how strong the field has to be, so there's no reason to believe that it will be necessary to use coils. It all depends on how strong the magnetic field needs to be.

      "It's also hard to contain a magnetic field in a small space"

      There is no need to "contain" the magnetic field, since each pixel would be dominated the nearest magnet (magnetic fields dissipate rapidly with distance).

  6. Re:But wait... by tsa · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, because the wall behind your monitor changes all the time! Never a dull moment there!

    --

    -- Cheers!

  7. Re:Response time? by profplump · · Score: 3, Informative

    You're right that the change isn't instantaneous on a CRT, but the maximum refresh rate of a CRT is very much related to the decay rate of the phosphors, at least after you adjust for the marketing lies. That's why fixed-frequency 60 Hz monitors (or TVs) don't have huge flicker problems, but a multi-sync monitor with a 180 Hz maximum refresh will put you into seizures if run with a 60 Hz refresh.

  8. Re:Response time? by SnowZero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.