Nanoresonators Create Ultra-High-Res Displays
TuurlijkNiet writes with this excerpt from Linux for Devices:
"Eat your heart out, 'Retina display.' A new technology unveiled yesterday will allow creating pixels eight times smaller than the ones on Apple's iPhone 4, eliminate the need for polarizer layers, and allow screens to make much more efficient use of available light, say University of Michigan researchers. ... The pixels in the nanoresonator displays are about ten times smaller than those on a typical computer screen, and about eight times smaller than the pixels on the iPhone 4, which are about 78 microns, according to Guo. Such pixel densities could make the technology useful in projection displays, as well as wearable, bendable or extremely compact displays, according to the researchers."
Every layer of polarization cuts the available light in half. Creating a display with pixels smaller than the unaided eye can view without these is actually huge because the current limit in preventing a "realistic" display (i.e. you can't tell the difference between the display and looking out a window) is actually in the contrast resolution (difference between light and dark) which still has a very long way to go before it hits human eye capacity. Freeing up more light allows for brighter whites and perhaps even the possibility of layering displays to get darker blacks (depending on the transparency of "black.")