Nanosys’ proprietary Quantum Dot technology is innovating the way displays reproduce images from source contents to achieve the highest quality of images, thus to deliver ultimate viewer experience.
How can we deliver specialty performance of vibrant, lifelike color and brightness at a commodity price?
Read on to find out more about QD…
WHAT IS A QUANTUM DOT?
Quantum Dots are very small semiconductor particles. As a semiconductor, they can emit energies in the form of light when excited by absorption of either light or electricity.
As small particles, they have a mere 2 to 8 nanometers in diameter: 60 million times smaller than a tennis ball, 10,000 times narrower than a human hair and just a little bit bigger than a water molecule.
Being SMALL in size gives quantum dots a unique superpower, not observable in macroscopic world. Their internal energy structure changes depending on the size. For example, 5nm and 8nm indium phosphite (InP) quantum dots have different enery levels, while 6 inch and 8 inch InP wafers would have the exactly same energy levels. This means 5nm InP QD will give out different color of light (green) from what 8nm InP QD emits (red). It means we don’t need to find a set of different materials to generate different colors of lights but simply change the size of given QDs.
HOW IT WORKS
This color tuning ability is a real-world example of the laws of Quantum Mechanics at work and it is unique to Quantum Dots.
When a Quantum Dot absorbs a photon, it generates an electron-hole pair that recombines to emit a new photon. Crucially, the color of this emitted photon depends on the size of the quantum dot: Bigger dots emit longer wavelengths, close to red (620 to 750 nm); smaller dots emit shorter wavelengths, closer to the violet end (380 to 450 nm) of the spectrum. Such “tunability” is unique to quantum dots. In other light-emitting materials, the wavelength of the emitted photon is a fixed property of the material and not affected by its dimensions. To create a quantum dot with a specific size, which determines the wavelength, Nanosys adjust the temperatures and the timing of the chemical reactions used in our automated production line.
WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT QD FOR DISPLAYS?
Nanosys’ proprietary technology enables to produce best quality crystal QD particles at a controlled size. The perfect crystal quality of Nanosys QDs guarantees highest brightness output and the controlled size leads to a sharp color spectrum of emission light. These features are the foundation for display innovation.
Typical displays are made of millions of pixels, which are again composed of multiple smaller subpixels emitting red, green, and blue lights. At each pixel, billions of color shades are generated by mixing these three primary colors of subpixels. Accordingly, color purity of the primary colors determines color resolution accuracy among the billions of shades.
Display technologies such as LED LCD and White OLED rely on a two-color (blue + yellow) light source. Color filters shave off this light source into red, green or blue primary color at each subpixel. This passive approach is very lossy because most of the energy from the yellow light source should be thrown away leaving only small portion of energy in either green or red. Also broad yellow spectrum of the light source only leads to broad green and red primaries through the color filter.
What if we could make only the red, green and blue light that the display needed, without waste and with high purity? This is where Quantum Dots spectral super powers really shine.
Nanosys Quantum Dots create a perfectly tuned spectrum of light with exactly the right red, green and blue that the display needs for accurate, lifelike color reproduction with high brightness.
LOW COST, HIGH VALUE MANUFACTURING
Through Nanosys’ proprietary solution chemistry, Nanosys Quantum Dots are manufactured in reactors bigger than thousand liters at high precision, high yield and high quality.
Nanosys also focus not only on making best QDs but also on developing technologies to innovate displays applying QDs via cheap techniques, such as wet coating, printing and roll-to-roll process. This means our materials can be easily integrated into displays without extra capex investment such as ones for vacuum or vapor processes.
MORE ON QUANTUM DOTS
QUANTUM DOT PRODUCTS
Learn more about Nanosys Quantum Dot Products on the market.
NANOSYS QUANTUM DOT TECHNOLOGY ROAMAP
Learn how Quantum Dots are applied to displays today and what’s coming next as the technology makes the jump from LCD to OLED, microLED and beyond.
IN-DEPTH VIDEO ABOUT NANOSYS QUANTUM DOTS
Go in-depth with Nanosys top Scientist Dr. Charlie Hotz in this over-an-hour-long lecture on all-things-QD.