It’s tempting to dismiss quantum dot screen technology as another gimmick on your checklist, something marketing jokers love but something that doesn’t add much to the actual viewing experience. Except that It was just awarded One of the highest awards in all of science, the Nobel Prize.
More specifically, Monji J. Boundy, and Louis E. Bruce and Alexei Ekimov jointly awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. “For the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.”
In the context of screen technology, quantum dots are associated with more vibrant and accurate colors. Arguably, this benefit isn’t always obvious, such as its recent popularity when it comes to seeing quantum dot technology in display spec lists.
Of course, just including quantum dot technology doesn’t guarantee that the display will be anything special.
But that doesn’t mean that the underlying technology isn’t still completely cool and somewhat cool. It also turns out that quantum dots are used for more than just making colors pop a little more in your favorite game.
So, what are quantum dots? In simple terms, small crystalline grains of a substance with a diameter of a few tens of atoms. To put their sizes into context, the size of a quantum dot is related to a soccer ball in roughly the same proportion as a soccer ball is to the entire planet. So, yeah, they’re young.
It must be very small because it relies on the fact that quantum effects kick in when materials are reduced to such small scales. Simply put, size matters on a quantitative scale.
It’s all about the space available for electrons on this small scale and the duality of wave and particle electrons. The smaller the size of the particle, the less space there is for the wave element with the dual nature of the electron.
you received it? Well, in short, if you make the beads small enough, they start doing really weird, non-Newtonian things. Like absorbing light and then re-emitting it at a completely different wavelength.
It also turns out that the wavelengths emitted by quantum dots depend on their size. Again, it has to do with the wave component of electron duality. Different quantum dot sizes allow different electron wave sizes and thus different wavelengths of light emission.
Back in the real world, quantum dots can be used to effectively “clean up” the light quality from the LED backlights used by most current computer monitors and LCD TVs. This makes colors more accurate and vibrant once the enhanced light is pushed through the red, green and blue sub-pixels of the LCD panel.
Between them, Boundy, Bruce, and Ekimov advanced the basic idea of quantum band effects through better understanding and then into actual practical applications through the ability to actually manufacture quantum dots.
Besides their use in digital displays, quantum dots are found in medical LEDs used to illuminate and identify tumor tissue. In the future, the researchers believe they could contribute to flexible electronics, small sensors, thin solar cells, and encrypted quantum communications.
So, yes, the next time you see “quantum dot” in a monitor’s spec list, you’ll know it’s something smart enough to deserve a Nobel Prize, and not just a marketing gimmick.
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