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Atomically thin LED opens the possibility for invisible displays
- panic 9y agoSome more pictures from the article itself: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03218-8/figures/4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03218-8/figures/4
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- unwind 9y agoThis did not inspire confidence: Commercial LEDs consist of a semiconductor material that is electrically injected with positive and negative charges, which produce light when they meet. Typically, two contact points are used in a semiconductor-based light emitting device; one for injecting negatively charged particles and one injecting positively charged particles. Isn't that a bit too simplified? That said it sounds like very cool technology although hard to see how electrical wires to each pixel would be as invisible at wall-sized scales.
- joering2 9y agoWhy not? Those "wires" will be thinner than human hair.
- ben_w 9y ago“Human hair” is much too thick for an invisible display. Do you have a more exact size?
- userbinator 9y agoalthough hard to see how electrical wires to each pixel would be as invisible at wall-sized scales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium_tin_oxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium_tin_oxide
- kurthr 9y agoITO isn't really transparent... it's pretty yellow (80-95% transmission) and it doesn't carry current well (20-100ohm/sq). You'd be better off with a metal mesh with large pitch electrodes. You're going to need some wires to address the display as well (whether active or passive matrix). With a large pitch Cu or Al conductors you can do 5ohm/sq with good transparency. That will let you do 200nits (candela/m2) with the efficiency of these thin LEDs. ITO would be 10x lower conductance and only works in LCDs because they are inverting voltage light valves (not light sources). If everything worked out you could reasonably view thin LEDs in a dim office environment. That's not really interesting unless it's 3D.
- dorfsmay 9y agoDidn't you know? When an anion and a cation meet they make little baby photons!
- billysielu 9y agoApple will love this, a screen that breaks even easier.
- diggan 9y agoSeems to be bendable so maybe breaking it is harder than current screens. > “The materials are so thin and flexible that the device can be made transparent and can conform to curved surfaces,” said Der-Hsien Lien, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and a co-first author
- SuddsMcDuff 9y agoI expect once the material has conformed to a curved surface it would have to be rigid from there on out.
- pjc50 9y agoMaybe, maybe not. Flat flexible circuits are established technology. LG already have a flexible display, although apparently it has a dead pixel problem. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35230043 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35230043
- lowtolerance 9y agoWouldn’t a rigid, curved glass surface be less prone to breakage than a flat piece of glass, since the full force of an impact is more likely to be deflected?
- pjc50 9y ago> By laying the semiconductor monolayer on an insulator and placing electrodes on the monolayer and underneath the insulator, the researchers could apply an AC signal across the insulator. During the moment when the AC signal switches its polarity from positive to negative (and vice versa), both positive and negative charges are present at the same time in the semiconductor, creating light. This is highly simplified, but essentially the LED is now capacitively coupled to its supply on one side, through the insulator*. As a result it has to be driven with AC. Neat trick.
- qbrass 9y agoThat's similar to how electroluminescent displays work. Except those use an insulating layer and electrode layer on both sides of the light producing layer instead of just one.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoWell what’s the point of the display if you can’t see it? ;)
- meuk 9y agoIf you can layer enough of such invisible screens, you could make a nice 3d display, although I'm not sure if it would actually look nice (you could probably see through objects).
- lawlessone 9y agoWE could build a real Voxatron!
- zingmars 9y agoCan't wait to wake up with ads on my windows...
- Beanus 9y agoGreat way to save $20,000
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoThat's been happening for a while now: https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-windows-10-ads-taskbar-file-explorer https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-window...
- mstolpm 9y agoI don't think the parent poster you replied to thought of -Microsoft- windows, but the ones in your home.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoIt was a knowing play-on-words; forgive the triviality, but it was too perfect an opportunity ;)
- yreg 9y agothatsthejoke.png
- coldcode 9y agoOr to ads on your body.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago...sprayed on by passing enterprising marketeers! The new tagging - ad-tagging!
- maxyme 9y agoIsn't heat a current major concern with LEDs? If so wouldn't this have to be hooked up to a heatsink in practice making the transparency irrelevant?
- pjc50 9y agoHeat is entirely dependent on brightness. It's only really an issue when using LEDs for illumination at multi-watt levels. Tiny thin LEDs are necessarily not going to have a huge power output. If the substrate is glass it will have decent thermal conductivity.
- drieddust 9y agoOnce it becomes cheap enough, this might give a huge boost to indoor farming.
- nkozyra 9y agoNot being familiar with the area, what problem would this solve for indoor farming?
- jfindley 9y agoAt a guess, being able to easily augment sunlight in parts of the world that get few hours of sunlight during local winter. Sun shines through when it's there, LED takes over when not. However in practice I don't think this would be useful - they're considerably less efficient than existing LEDs (currently 1% vs 25-30%) and I think that efficiency is more of a problem than transparency.
- trisimix 9y agoThey aren't diodes either
- mojomark 9y agoTransparent OLEDs (TOLEDs), Transparent Quantum Dot LEDs (QD-LEDs), Transparent Inorganic LEDs, have all been around for a long time now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJQzPrkkH6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJQzPrkkH6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv46YU-X9Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv46YU-X9Xs I'm confuzzled by the 'news', although the AC drive, vice DC is interesting I suppose.
- ricardobeat 9y agoFeature wise they sound similar, but we’re talking about three atoms thick here. This could be world-changing tech if it gets efficient enough.
- amelius 9y agoCan it show black pixels? What is the contrast ratio?
- comboy 9y agoThis is just a single LED. And you are asking about specs of some future product that may use it. I think you can make background dark (from transparent) by using good old LCD technology. Because that's basically what LCD is about.
- blauditore 9y agoThe standard showcase for such things are usually transparent displays. While looking cool, they would be pretty annoying: There's always interference with the background. That's also why no one uses transparent whiteboards as seen in movies. But of course, it would also be neat to just have displays on surfaces where not visible when turned off.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoOn-screen keyboards are pretty annoying, that didn't stop them from becoming the only option available.
- lowtolerance 9y agoThey’re the only option available because tiny mobile keyboards were pretty damned annoying, too, while also carrying the cost of dozens of potential points of failure, taking up a considerable amount of real estate regardless of how long the keyboard is actually used, and forcing a particular key layout on the user. I honestly don’t think I’d buy a phone with a hard keyboard, even if there were decent options for one.
- Retric 9y agoSlide out keyboards are an option. Combine with an on screen keyboard for the other layout and the only cost is a slightly thicker device.
- Armisael16 9y agoThis isn’t an LED (in fact it isn’t a diode at all). Can we rename the submission title?
- Raphmedia 9y agoLooks like they meant LED as in _l_ight _e_mitting _d_evice.
- Armisael16 9y agoThat simply isn't what the acronym LED means. It's equivalent to using WMD to mean 'weapons of mass disruption'.
- baybal2 9y agoLooks like they figured out how to make LEDs with atomic layer deposition
- patrickcteng 9y agoFloat-in-the-air 3D displays/images are in the labs already! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01125-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01125-y
- silveira 9y agohttps://hackaday.com/2013/12/31/case-modder-builds-lcd-window-causes-lsd-flashbacks/ https://hackaday.com/2013/12/31/case-modder-builds-lcd-windo...