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July 12, 2021
from Chalmers University of Technology
Imagine sitting in the sun reading a digital screen that is as thin as paper but the same picture quality as indoors. Thanks to research from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, it could soon become a reality. A new type of reflective screen – sometimes also referred to as electronic paper – offers optimal color display and at the same time uses ambient light to reduce energy consumption to a minimum.
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Traditional digital screens use a backlight to illuminate the text or images displayed on them. This is fine indoors, but viewing such screens in bright sunshine is difficult. However, reflective screens try to take advantage of ambient light and mimic the way our eyes react to natural paper.
« In order for reflective screens to compete with the energy-intensive digital screens we use today, images and Colors are reproduced with the same high quality. That will be the real breakthrough. Our research now shows how the technology can be optimized and makes it attractive for commercial use, « says Marika Gugole, doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the TU Chalmers.
The researchers had already succeeded in developing an ultra-thin, To develop flexible material that reproduces all the colors that an LED screen can display, while using only a tenth of the energy that a standard tablet consumes.
In the previous design, however, the colors on the reflective screen were not Now the new study published in the journal Nano Letters takes the material one step further. Using a previously explored, porous and nano-structured material that contains tungsten trioxide, gold and platinum, they tried a new tactic – Invert the design so that the colors on the screen appear much more accurate.
Inverting the design makes a big one n step forward. They placed the component that makes the material electrically conductive under the pixelated nanostructure that reproduces the colors – instead of above, as was previously the case. With this new design, you can look directly at the pixelated surface and see the colors much more clearly.
In addition to the minimal energy consumption, reflective screens have other advantages. For example, they tire the eyes much less than looking at a normal screen.
Certain rare metals such as gold and platinum are needed to make these reflective screens, but because the end product is so thin, the quantities needed are very small . The researchers have high hopes that at some point it will be possible to significantly reduce the quantities required for production.
“Our main goal in the development of these reflective screens, or electronic paper as it is sometimes called, is to be sustainable to find energy-saving solutions. And in this case, the energy consumption is almost zero, because we simply use the ambient light in the surroundings, ”explains research director Andreas Dahlin, professor at the Department of Chemistry and Process Engineering in Chalmers.
Some tablets already have reflective screens, but they do only display the colors black and white well, which limits their use.
« A large industrial group with the appropriate technical competence could in principle start developing a product with the new technology within a few months, » says Andreas Dahlin, who himself presents many other applications. In addition to smartphones and tablets, it could also be useful for outdoor advertising and offer energy and resource savings compared to printed posters or moving digital screens.
The technology behind the reflective screens developed by Chalmers researchers is based on the material’s ability to absorb and regulate reflection of light. In the current study, tungsten trioxide is the core material, but in previous studies the researchers also used polymers. The material that covers the surface conducts electronic signals across the screen and can be patterned to create high resolution images.
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