Is it time for LCD monitors to be phased out?

Recently, a research team from Nottingham Trent University, the Australian National University, and the University of New South Wales in Canberra has successfully developed a proof-of-concept display technology. The technology is said to replace the liquid crystal (LCD) panels found in many of today's TVs and monitors, resulting in thinner screens, higher resolution, and lower power consumption.

Although in the current display industry, there are various display technologies such as LCD, QLED, EPD, Mini LED, OLED, LDT, Micro LED, etc., among the many display technologies, the market uses the most and has the widest demand. Most of them are still dominated by LCD technology using LED backlight modules.

However, the development of traditional LCD technology seems to have reached its limit, just like Moore's Law, there will be an end.

Dragomir Neshev, a professor of physics at the Australian National University, said: "The capabilities of conventional displays have reached their peak, and due to several limitations, significant improvements are unlikely in the future. Today, people are looking for high-resolution and fast refresh rate monitors. All-solid-state flat-panel display technology."

"We have designed and developed metasurface pixels that could be ideal for next-generation displays. Unlike liquid crystals, our pixels don't require polarized light to function, which will halve the energy consumption of the screen."

To control individual pixels at high modulation rates, the research team's proof-of-concept platform employs indium tin conductive oxide (ITO) as a micro-heater for silicon metasurface cells, which can rapidly change the optical properties of silicon metasurface cells, The thickness of the silicon metasurface is said to be only one-hundredth that of the liquid crystal cells in conventional displays, and one-twentieth that of a human hair. And the technology has a response time of less than one millisecond, which is 10 times faster than the detection limit of the human eye.

Professor Andrey Miroshnichenko from UNSW Canberra noted: "Our pixels are made of silicon, which has a very long lifespan compared to the organic materials required by other existing alternatives. Furthermore, silicon is widely available. , CMOS that is compatible with mature technology and is inexpensive to produce."

The technology could also be used in dynamic VR holography and LiDAR technology and could be used to produce thinner panels with 100 times higher resolution than current LCD-based screens while cutting power consumption in half.