Digital displays including flat-screen TVs and smartphone screens could be more energy efficient while generating richer, brighter colours with a new technique from MIT researchers.
Working with Samsung, the team studied microscopic changes that occur inside LEDs that utilise electrically excited quantum dots, which are precisely shaped nanoscale semiconductor particles that emit extremely pure coloured light.
Conventional LED displays utilise thousands of tiny lightbulbs that generate the red, green and blue light needed to create the perception of any colour on the visible spectrum. More advanced OLED screens utilise electrically excited, glowing organic molecules instead of light bulbs.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team sought to replace the organic molecules with quantum dots, which emit purer red, green and blue light in a more energy-efficient manner.
Quantum dots are currently used in some of the computer and television displays with the best picture quality available...