QuantumDots-Info: the QD experts

A team of researchers, which included scientists from SLAC, Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley and DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, recently explained a process that interferes with making quantum dots brighter - when attempting to increase the intensity of emitted light, heat is generated instead - reducing the dots’ light-producing efficiency. The results of this new work could have broad implications for developing future quantum and photonics technologies.

Image credit: Nature Communications/SLAC

In a QLED TV screen, dots absorb blue light and turn it into green or red. At the low energies where TV screens operate, this conversion of light from one color to another is virtually 100% efficient. But at the higher excitation energies required for brighter screens and other technologies, the efficiency drops sharply. Researchers theorized about why this happens, but no one had ever observed it at the atomic scale until now.

According to a new report from Korea, Samsung Display is set to begin producing full QD-OLED display prototypes in June this year. SDC will produce both TV and monitor prototypes, which it will send to potential customers (such as Samsung Electronics, Sony, and Chinese TV makers). When customers approve the prototypes, SDC will be ready for commercial production.

The new report also says that Samsung Electronics TV unit (Visual Display Business) is ready to start adoption these panels provided SDC secures the yields and production capacity required by SE. Even if yields are high, total production capacity at SDC's Q1 production line is 30,000 8.5-Gen substrates, which may not be enough for Samsung's TV business.

Scientists at the Chemistry and Physics Institutes of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Michigan in the United States, have provides insights into the fundamental physics of perovskite quantum dots.

Nanomaterials of perovskite dispersed in hexane and irradiated by laser. Light emission by these materials is intense thanks to resistance to surface defects (photo: Luiz Gustavo Bonato)

"We used coherent spectroscopy, which enabled us to analyze separately the behavior of the electrons in each nanomaterial in an ensemble of tens of billions of nanomaterials. The study is groundbreaking insofar as it combines a relatively new class of nanomaterials - perovskite - with an entirely novel detection technique," Lázaro Padilha Junior, principal investigator for the project on the Brazilian side, explained.

Japan-based material developer Green Science Alliance developed a new composite material made from a combination of graphene quantum dots and silica, useful to create white LEDs from blue LEDs (440-470 nm).

The company says that this is the first adoption of such a material for LED applications. The company says the adoption of the QD and Silica offers superior performance to the currently-used phosphor as the QDs do not suffer from light scattering, and the white LED is more efficient. The material is also not expensive as the graphene QDs can be produced on the cheap. GS Alliance believes the new white LED will be cheaper than current white LEDs on the market.

A new study by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Delaware, Baltimore County, in a collaborative project through the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois, used ultrafast nanometric imaging and found good and bad emitters among populations of carbon dots. This observation suggests that by selecting only super-emitters, carbon nanodots can be purified to replace toxic metal quantum dots in many applications, according to the researchers.

“Coming into this study, we did not know if all carbon dots are only mediocre emitters or if some were perfect and others were bad,” said Illinois chemistry professor Martin Gruebele, who led the study. “We knew that if we could show that there are good ones and bad ones, maybe we could eventually find a way to pick the perfect ones out of the mix.”

US-based Tetrapod Quantum Dots developer Quantum Materials Corp (QMC) announced that is has received a $15 million investment from Pasaca Capital.

QMC develops QDs for several markets, including the display industry, but it is currently focused on the medical market. The company developed the use of quantum dots to verify covid-10 sample origins and track samples through the testing process. The company brands is medical solutions under the QMC HealthID brand, and the Pasaca Capital investment will support an expansion of the medical market.

According to industry reports, Samsung Electronics (finally) committed to adopt Samsung Display's QD-OLED TV panels, and plans to release its first QD-OLED TV in 2022.

Samsung Display announced a $10.85 billion investment in QD-OLED TV R&D and production line in 2019, and has started to produce prototypes towards the end of 2020. The company's plan is to start mass production by the end of 2021, in the first line (15,000 monthly substrates). SDC is also planning a second line to follow the first, to arrive at a total of 30,000 monthly 8.5-Gen substrates.

Market research firm DSCC says that it expects Samsung's QD-OLED panels to carry a lower material cost compared to LG's current W-OLED display - by as much as 30-40%.

These are unyielded costs, note, and LG's years of experience likely means its yields will be much higher at least in the first years of QD-OLED and inkjet-printing production.

Perovskite QD film developer Zhijing Nanotech updated that it recently concluded a successful pilot with TCL to produce 500 75-inch QD-enhanced LCD TVs with Zhijing's PQDF films.

The company reports that the TVs featured a wide color gamut, 147% BT709 - which is higher than most QD TV's on the market, and higher than TCL's original 75M10 TVs. The green Cadmium-free pQD films have excellent optical properties and offer lower cost compared to current QD solutions, according to Zhijing Nanotech.

Samsung announced its latest flagship QLED TV model, the Neo QLED TV. The flagship 2021 models will feature mini-LED backlighting with full-array local dimming, AI upscaling and up to 8K resolutions.

Samsung's Neo QLEDs will also support 4K/120 fps, VRR and the Game Status Bar for gamers, a solar-enabled remote control and Samsung's latest health applications and more.