Yearn for the warm yellow light of an old energy-hungry Edison incandescent light bulb? Find the white-blue glare of a modern LED bulb too harsh? Well, quantum dot technology is about to change all of that. Just 1 to 10 nanometers in diameter, they are 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Quantum dots are incredibly small particles that are highly energy efficient but very bright light-emitting nanocrystals that absorb light of one wavelength and convert it to another.
They were actually invented at Bell Labs way back in 1982 and they range between 2 to 10 nanometers in diameter, which is equivalent to 50 atoms in size. So, you can’t measure these microscopic things using your old school shatter proof ruler that’s for sure. But, it’s this small size that gives quantum dots its unique properties paving the way for future technology. Due to the way quantum dots work, it is said that they will drastically enhance your screens peak brightness opening up some interesting possibilities, such as enabling support for higher dynamic color ranges on televisions something the industry is calling Dolby Vision which is a new film standard that, when used, will result in content that retains more colour and contrast information than existing standards. The result will be pictures that have greater differences in the brightest and darkest parts of the image and look more ‘dynamic’ and real as a result.
You might want to think of it as looking at a video on your TV of a sunrise and that video looking so realistic that you could not tell the difference between that and the real thing. In order to do this you need brighter TVs and quantum dots deliver exactly that. Not only that but quantum dots will give TV’s better colour accuracy and saturation. One of the greatest advantages to any industry from quantum dots is that they take 30% less energy to produce the same amount of light. If used in mobile phone displays, quantum dots stand to vastly improve the much needed battery life.
While there are doubtless plenty of complexities in integrating quantum dots into screens, from an end user perspective the only downside I’ve seen thus far is light bleed issues on tablets. This was seen on the new Kindle HDX tablets, the first generation of quantum dot tablets. While not visible under all conditions, any white background (i.e. when reading a book) exposed very irritating light bleed out from the edges of the tablet. And so, solving this issue will be vital to whether we see quantum dot phones and tablets, but I’d put my money on it resolving this issue fairly soon. Apple reportedly has patents describing how it plans to solve the current tablet light bleed problem and so don’t be surprised to see this technology in their phones and tablets sometime soon.
With that in mind, there are some exciting news in the medical industry when talking about quantum dots. Doctors are currently working with quantum dots to illuminate molecules that can bind themselves to cancer tumors, allowing the surgeon to easily distinguish the healthy from the diseased one. In addition, there is also talk about using this technology in security inks and solar cells. Finally, there is also a Canadian start-up company poised to boost the capability of data centers to unprecedented levels of speed, cost savings, and energy efficiency by using quantum dot technology in their computer network infrastructure. So, a lot more uses for quantum dots than just in TV’s.
At the moment the display industry, especially the TV companies, have shown the greatest interest in quantum dots, but the lighting, medical, and computer data center industries are certainly the next in line to shine, lighting the way forward for many other technological advancements.
