Researchers from Nottingham Trent University, the Australian National University, and the University of New South Wales Canberra have created a new proof-of-concept technology that has the potential to completely transform the display industry, TechXplore reports.
This technology, known as "metasurfaces," has the potential to replace conventional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in electronic devices and screens. Read more.
Making Screens Thinner, Cheaper, Efficient
Metasurfaces are materials with extraordinary light-scattering capabilities. However, they have limitations because they are typically static, meaning their properties cannot change in real-time.
Scientists have been attempting to increase the utility of metasurfaces by making them tunable or capable of changing their properties on demand.
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The newly engineered "metasurfaces" are arrays of nanoparticles with exceptional light scattering properties that can be tuned electrically.
These metasurfaces offer significant advantages over existing liquid crystal displays in devices such as televisions and mobile phones. They are anticipated to make electronic devices thinner, provide higher resolution, and be more energy efficient.
Liquid crystal display (LCD) technology is the most dominant and widely used technology for screens such as televisions and computer monitors. However, production costs, durability, and energy usage have prevented liquid crystal technology from reaching its full potential.
LCDs, according to DisplayMate, can have a lot of weak or stuck pixels that are always on or off. Some pixels may be incorrectly linked to adjacent pixels, rows, or columns. Furthermore, LCD has a limited viewing angle, and the brightness, contrast, gamma, and color mixtures vary with viewing angle. At large angles, this can cause contrast and color reversal.
Why Metasurface is Better than LCD and LED
Researchers have developed metasurface cells that are one hundred times thinner than liquid crystal cells, have ten times higher resolution, and consume fifty percent less energy.
In addition, they do not require polarizers, which account for a significant amount of wasted light intensity and energy consumption in displays. Metasurfaces have demonstrated many revolutionary applications, including metalenses, equation solvers, beam shapers, and holographic projections, in the past few years.
The researchers believe that their technology is compatible with modern electronic displays and fills a technological gap for light-switching metasurfaces that are capable of tuning at high frequencies.
Electrically Programmed Pixels
As part of the study, the team demonstrated that pixels could be electrically programmed and that the light could be switched nearly twenty times faster than the human aversion response time by adjusting the material's temperature.
The researchers believe that their new technology can significantly reduce energy consumption, which is great news considering how many monitors and televisions are used by homes and businesses daily.
A Closer Look at the Study
In this study, researchers developed a novel type of electrically-tunable metasurface. Silicon, commonly used in electronics, was combined with a special coating that can generate heat when an electric current is applied. This heating alters the optical properties of the silicon, which alters how the metasurface scatters light.
The researchers discovered that their electrically-tunable metasurface could rapidly alter its optical properties with minimal electrical power. This means it could be used to create fast and transparent optical switches for applications such as electronic displays, virtual reality, and light detection and ranging.
The researchers believe that the development of metasurfaces could generate a frontier technology in new flat displays, and the work is reported in the journal Light: Science & Applications.
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