New oled materials would allow 10,000 pixels per inch
Having a TV with immense pixel density may not make much sense on day-to-day life, but when it comes to screens that are very close to our face, like Virtual Reality, it becomes necessary to think about this topic.
Now there is news in the sector. In the race to create increasingly bright and detailed screens, researchers have reached a new milestone. A new OLED architecture, based on technology originally designed for ultra-thin solar panels, can now package a considerable amount of 10,000 pixels per inch (PPI), achieving a resolution level that far exceeds that currently found in state-of-the-art smartphones and TVs.
It is the result of a collaboration between researchers from Stanford University and the Samsung Institute of Advanced Technology, who have leveraged a material called 'met photonics' that can control light in a new way.
Commercial OLED TVs currently have a pixel density of approximately 100 to 200ppi, while the resolution of new smartphones is approximately 400 to 500ppi. Reaching 10,000 is a save, and it would also be brighter and show better colour accuracy, while its production costs less.
Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are based on small organic compounds that emit light when stimulated by an electric current. On OLED screens for smartphones, each emitter on the screen usually produces one of the primary colours and then is applied against a sheet of metal that filters the correct diodes to control the composition of each pixel. Television screens, on the other hand, use white OLED, which emit all three primary colours at once. Filters are then placed over the emitters to determine the final colour of the diode, to produce the correct pixel.
Both methods have their flaws: thick metal sheets applied to coloured diodes limit the scale of the screen, while colour filters applied to white emitters consume more energy.
Solar panel designs help you think differently with so-called 'metamaterials', used to manipulate light in the design of ultra-thin solar cells. They can create a base layer called 'optical metasurface', which is made of reflective metal and dispersed with microscopic pillars that together "wrinkle" the surface of the layer.
Thanks to their different sizes and arrangements, they can manipulate the different wavelengths specific to red, blue and green lights. When white light falls on the pillars, they, in turn, can "assign" a specific primary colour to the diodes opposite them. In this way, different patterns of pillars in the metasurface define different colours.
So far, in the prototypes presented, they have achieved greater purity of colour and a double increase in the efficiency of luminescence, thus using less energy.
An ultra-high density of 10,000 pixels per inch meets the requirements of next-generation micro screens that can be manufactured in glasses or contact lenses, so we'll be on the lookout for the advancement of this impressive technology.
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