QD films

According to a report from Korea, Samsung has teamed up with its QD supplier Hansol Chemical to simplify the structure of its QD films. The company aims to introduce new lower-cost QD-LCD films.

The report suggests that Samsung developed a technology to encapsulate individual QD particles, and so the new films could be produced without the encapsulation (barrier) films. This will result in a simple structure of only three layers - two PET layers and the QD layer between them. 

Here's a nice video from Insight Media, showing Nanosys' booth and technologies at DisplayWeek 2022.

You can see several QD-ehhanced LCDs, a prototype microLED microdisplay by glo (which Nanosys recently acquired), and a side-by-side comparison of Samsung's QD-OLEDs and LG's WOLED TVs. You can also see the new xQDEF laminate films developed with Bready.

Display market research firm DSCC says that QDEF technology (QD films for LCD displays) will continue to grow at a fast pace, rising from $236 million in 2022 to $326 million in 2025. The main market will remain TV applications. This forecast does not include any perovskite-based films.

QDEF are quantum dots enhancement films, used to enhance the color gamut of LCD displays. The main display applications for QDEF are in TVs, monitors and laptops.

Last year, Poland-based Ergis Group launched an OLED encapsulation film platform called Ergis noDiffusion®. The company is currently testing its film solutions at customer sites in Asia, the EU and the US, and it is now starting to offer the same platform for the protection of quantum dot films (QD films) used in display and lighting applications.

These new films can be tuned to fit specific needs. Ergis can deploy its films on several substrate types, with varying film thickness, and the barrier properties can be tuned to be between 10-6 to 10-3. This means that custom films can be created to suit the specific sensitivity of the QDs for water vapor and to achieve specific product lifetime or other required properties.

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.

LG announced its new QNED TV range for 2021, its top-of-the-line LCD TV for next year. The QNED TVs will adopt miniLED backlighting for increased contrast and a quantum dot film for increased color gamut.

LCD says that the miniLEDs and QD technology will improve its LCD TV picture quality - but it will still behind LG's flagship OLED TV technology. LG did not yet reveal the models themselves, but it says the maximum QNED TV size will be 85-inch.