Slashdot Mirror
Quantum Dots Will Make Flexible Displays
judgecorp writes "Quantum dots are small semiconductors, whose properties are defined by their size and shape. British nanotechnology firm Nanoco has found they are ideal for displays, allowing the possibility of screens that can be rolled up — and which also use far less of the hazardous chemicals found in normal screens."
In addition to being Cadmium free (a problem in the EU where the exemption for Cadmium in displays expires in 2014), they directly emit light using less power than traditional filtered color LCDs.
Now leaving my phone in the bathroom means someone will mistake it for toilet paper rather than returning it!
Think of the resolutions the human eye won't be able to distinguish; dots the size of percentage of a human hair to dots the size of potatoes, its all just a blur to our eyes. But hey, who am I to poop on progress on any scale?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Might be great for a head-mounted display though, or augmented-reality contact lenses. Now that voice command is starting to catch on, the largest remaining hindrance to miniaturization is the display.
The inhalation is a crucial step in the manufacture. A well trained technician can inhale, then spew forth in a finely detailed pattern to create the final image. One of the most exalted practitioners was able to create not only images of Christ, but also Mary, and Colonel Sanders.
I think some reporter got confused. Cadmium hasn't seen much use in displays since the early 80s, because there are better, non-toxic materials that have been discovered since then. I think it's still used in a few applications, but nothing Joe Consumer is likely to buy. Where cadmium is often used is in quantum dots, which has thus far made quantum dots unusable for most consumer applications. That appears to be one of the innovations coming out of the research here... quantum dots that don't use cadmium (or other heavy metals), and are thus safe to use in the creation of the flexible display that everyone's wanted for a while.
or augmented-reality contact lenses
The problem is transmitting the pixel data to the lenses wirelessly while also simultaneously feeding them power somehow: you can't really have wires going to your contact lenses. If that could be solved in a reasonable manner then sure, it would be great. I've been thinking to myself that it'd be neat to have some sort of a small plug behind your ear into which you can plug in a small audio cable, and then have the audio transmitted directly to your inner ear through cranial resonance. Now, combine that with augmented-reality contact lenses/glasses and you've got a really, really powerful system useful for things ranging from entertainment to industrial uses to military uses and even remotely-guided surgeries.
Yeah, the reporter (and then the submitter) somehow interpreted the company's press release about a cadmium free QD-LED display to mean normal LCD displays contained cadmium. And then to make it worse the submitter tried to expand on this misinformation by quoting one exemption for a single company's special purpose LED and wrongly applying that to a whole industry and regulatory body. Sigh.
I looked at a few pics, but they didn't look any better than the monitor I'm already using.
The answer is not contacts. Direct retinal contact only separated by a thin transparent film. Bypass everything else.
Use the rest of the space in the eye for equipment. Processing, storage, CCD, power generation, etc. With a high enough resolution CCD (or equivalent) you create a cybernetic implant with incredible vision. Overlay any kind of visual information you want on to any surface you can see, or have it hover in front of you.
And if you see strange things, you don't know whether to go to the psychiatrist for hallucinations, or to tech support for someone hacking your augmented reality system.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Because they are still working on making stable chemistry for OLED? The clue is in the name - O means organic. Organic molecules decay. The colours on OLED screens therefore fade with time and with UV light.
They can also consume MORE power than LCD under certain circumstances - the light doesn't need to pass through a filter, true, and they are much more efficient at displaying a mostly black screen (because the OLEDs just switch off while the LCD still generates all that backlight and then blocks it), but in a predominantly white picture, such as is common in computer applications, they can consume more power than the LCD does. I guess that lots of little LED elements are less efficient than a few big ones.
Quantum dots are teensy little aggregations of inorganic chemicals, so they shouldn't suffer from the same decay problems as OLED.