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G'day r/science! A team of our researchers, alongside ANU and Nottingham Trent University colleagues have developed a proof-of-concept technology that could eventually supersede LCDs and LED.

The tech – which has extraordinary light scattering properties – would replace the liquid crystal layer and would not require the polarisers, which are responsible for half of wasted light intensity and energy use in displays.

“Our pixels are made of silicon, which offers a long life span in contrast with organic materials required for other existing alternatives. Moreover, silicon is widely available, CMOS* compatible with mature technology, and cheap to produce.”

You can take a deep dive into the research paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01078-6

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Hmm, light scattering? I'm not in this field, does anyone mind explaining what that means in this context? It sounds like it wouldn't yield a clear display, but that doesn't seem to be the case based on the context—hence my curiosity!

Would my eyes be able to tell the difference?

No but your wallet will!

So, when will I be able to roll my screen into my bag ?

I see these advances as most potentially useful in VR contexts; we've basically maxed out relevant screen resolution for normal displays in the effective arc lengths observable by the human eye.

When we say a 10 fold greater resolution, what are we comparing that with? Do you have a pixel density (ppi) figure that you can measure?

Gamers will tell you numbers go up

I wonder how much 8,000k cables will cost?

England? Electronics? Hopefully Lucas wasn’t involved!

What's "100X thinner?" The switching layer or the whole panel?

Because we have OLED display panels so thin they can be rolled and folded, already.

And this doesn't say they eliminated backlighting, just polarization, which is only needed because liquid crystal layers don't block light they just twist its polarization axis so it's 90 degrees from the polarized sheet in the next layer.

Also, calling something "CMOS compatible" is like calling it "IBM PC compatible." Not the flex it's meant to appear a to be.

I can hear apple execs nipples popping

I could see this tech being used in tandem with pre-foviated rendering in VR contexts to deliver extreme detail with efficient GPU usage.

> The tech – which has extraordinary light scattering properties – would replace the liquid crystal layer and would not require the polarisers, which are responsible for half of wasted light intensity and energy use in displays.

I think it's referring to CMOS manufacturing processes isn't it? As in they don't have to sink billions into new fabrication tech rather it's materials science that current processes could adapt into established knowledge base, so like they didn't reinvent the wheel they just made better wheels?

I suppose with regards to OP question they would be able to see the difference in a thinner display with lower energy use, totally!

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As a former led video wall tech: I am so glad I don’t work in that industry. How tf are you supposed to work with something that small in anything resembling a cost effective manner

Fuckin TV wallpaper. Finally.

> Our metasurfaces are controlled via electrically driven localised transparent heaters that switch the metasurface optical properties by biased voltages <5 V. By applying an asymmetric driving voltage, we achieve flash heating, leading to 625 μs modulation time. It is worth mentioning that such a modulation time is more than 10-fold faster than the detection limit of the human eye (13 ms). Therefore, despite the operational temperature of ~200 °C, it can still be integrated with CMOS devices.

Huh—so does this mean that it’s impractical for something like phone touchscreens? That seems awfully hot.

Really cool work in any case! :)

Anytime I see a breakthrough on resolution all I can see in my head about is 2 detectives telling a computer guy to keep enhancing a grainy security camera footage till they see the reflection of the killer in the side mirror of a car parked across the street.

Awesome stuff!

Yeah. It was a big thing in the 80s. If you could piggyback a CMOS manufacturer's process you could bootstrap a product line easily.

Now it's not that big a deal because the fab equipment manufacturers can deal with exotic processes, and leading edge processes are themselves extremely exotic compared to something generically CMOS.

It's like plugging a full-color display or automatic transmission. Kind of sad.

I would rather be able to fold it up like an old school map.

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What's the overall thermal profile of such a device at screen sizes given that it's based on flash heating elements?

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> calling something “CMOS compatible” is like calling it “IBM PC compatible.” Not the flex it’s meant to appear a to be.

CMOS compatibility is quite the flex when considering optical technologies.

I’m guessing it works similarly to how a chameleon changes color or how peacock feathers shine blue

A chameleon’s skin doesn’t show colors through pigments. It rather changes structure to scatter light at different wavelengths, trapping some light, while letting some of it through, showing colors.

I’m just guessing that’s how this tech works though. I always wondered why we didn’t go in that direction to create color anyways. Might not be what’s going on here

These are emissive only right?

Could they potentially be worked into a reflective display?

Lucas is part of ZF now, their modern products actually work

What is the heat profile of this? Won't it likely exhibit the same issues as plasma/oled ie. burn in/burn out.

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I think that should highlight the supposedly excellent viewing angles of this display technology. Really not sure though.

On phones sure. Pc displays not really.

Your tech does not require polarizers, but requires heaters. What is the total final efficiency, compared to LCDs? Why are you expecting that something heated up to 200 Celsius (and constantly re-heated and re-cooled?) will have a long life span?

Could you clarify this passage? "We believe it is time for LCD and LED displays to be phased out"

I understand LCD part, but LED? You still need light source for your tunable metasurface display.

worth the cost, perfect for displaying the compressed 720p HD programs from cable TV

This is what innovation is these days. Lame. Another product. A smaller TV. Who even needs better resolution?

How about products that last? No more planned obsolescence. How about less plastic? How about less consumption in general?

Next step, transparant on demand

Make it transparant so we can use windows as tv screen.

Nice. :-) I see borderless windows at the flip of a switch. The window is real and there, but you can set the rest of the wall to look transparent whenever you want.

LED is an LCD display with LED lights instead of fluorescent. They are really just LED-lit LCD displays. The LED allows more even lighting, more brightness and longer lifespan in theory.

I say skip right to holograms. Things like 8k 2D is mostly worthless because our eyes don't care about 4k vs 8k enough. We need other senses to get involved. Like a TV that produces smells would be a lot more immersive than just 8k. A good sound system will be more immersive than going from 4k to 8k and the tech looks far more prone to failure.

Bigger number better

It’s the thinnest and lightest ever. We think you’re gonna love it!

Hi there u/tornpentacle, here's a response from Prof Andrey Miroshnichenko, a lead researcher in the Nanophotonics team at UNSW Canberra.

&#x200B;

>LCD screens use backlight illumination, and light propagates through a liquid crystal cell before entering our eyes. By changing the properties of the liquid crystal cell, the light can be blocked or not. Here we eliminate the relatively thick liquid crystal cell, maintaining the ability to control light propagation properties, making it thinner and lighter.

Thanks for the questions u/EMitch02, here's Professor Andrey Miroshnichenko.

>Depending on the size of the screen. Generally, it should enable sharper images even on large screens.

Here's what Professor Andrey Miroshnichenko had to say, u/PPatBoyd:

>Great suggestion! Indeed, it would be possible to make curved (or even flexible) screens using such devices.

You can almost hear the boners popping at r/virtualreality

but OLED? Which is better, this or that?