Colorful Quantum-Dot Displays

Liquid-crystal displays, or LCDs, found in televisions, computers, and cell phones, are very inefficient: their complex optical layers discard over 90 percent of the light they produce internally, some of it because it's not quite the right color. Displays that will be in products made by Korean electronics company LG at the end of the year will have a better color gamut and save battery life by using more of the light that normally gets tossed out.
The displays incorporate nanomaterials called quantum dots that convert light from the backlight into narrowly defined bands of color that are matched to the display's filters. Depending on the design of the display, the addition of quantum dots made by Palo Alto, CA-based company Nanosys improves power efficiency by more than 10 percent and significantly improves the color gamut of the display. LG demonstrated a cell-phone-sized display incorporating the quantum-dot technology last week at the Society for Information Display's annual meeting in Seattle. The company has not yet announced what particular product the quantum-dot backlight will be used in first.