Display and TV makers looking for The Next Big Thing may have found it. Palo Alto-based Nanosys says today’s displays only offer 30% of the colors the human eye can see in reality.
Nanosys, as you can tell by the name, works in the world of nano-materials, materials up to 100,000X thinner than a human hair. From this nanotechnology background, the company has come up with process of mass producing nanocrystals of particular sizes, embedding them in a solution and then coating a thin sheet of film with it.
This thin nanoparticle film goes inside a display to effectively double the color range the display can show. QDEF and QuantumRail are composed of Nanosys’ proprietary, high efficiency quantum dot phosphors. Larger than a water molecule, but smaller than a virus, these tiny phosphors convert blue light from a standard GaN LED into different wavelengths based upon their size.
Samsung and LG are believers-- both are Nanosys investors. The first devices containing its quantum dot technology -- probably tablets or notebook computers – should reach US stores in the first half of next year and TVs by the end of 2012. Can pro displays be far behind?