ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE
Wide colour gamut technology segmentation – OLEDs will remain expensive and capacity constrained, while quantum dot films will propagate through mid-range sets as costs decrease and quantum dot colour filters emerge to address the high-end segment
easier to implement in televisions than OLEDs, as they are fully compatible with current LCD manufacturing capabilities. As a result, any LCD television manufacturer can decide to add quantum dots to its product line for a decreasing level of capital expenditure, according to Virey. ‘Today, it costs approximately $50 per
square metre of display to implement quantum dots,’ Virey said. ‘We expect this figure to drop to about $15 per square metre in the next five years.’
“Yole expects quantum dot televisions to capture the lion’s share of the WCG market over the next five years”
The result of implementing quantum dots is a huge boost in efficiency and colour for LCDs that enables them to compete with, and in some cases outperform, OLED displays in aspects such as brightness, colour and cost. ‘Quantum dots are able to achieve higher peak brightness, lower energy consumption, slightly wider colour gamut and better colour volume [than OLEDs] – the ability to render all the colours perfectly at any level of brightness,’ Virey explained. This competitive performance, combined
with minimal capital investment, an ease of implementation and an upcoming period of constrained manufacturing for OLED televisions, could lead to a dramatic increase in uptake of quantum dot LCD (QLCD/QLED) televisions worldwide in the near future. Yole expects quantum dot
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televisions to capture the lion’s share of the WCG market over the next five years.
Taking it further In the continued efforts to decrease the cost and increase the uptake of quantum dot displays, manufacturers have been exploring alternative methods of deploying quantum dots that will boost their performance even further, beyond that of QDEFs. ‘At this point it’s really only the beginning of where quantum dots can go; this is the first step on a roadmap for the technology,’ commented Yurek. ‘We are continuing to invest in improving the cost and efficiency of QDEFs. As we have improved the stability of the material, we have been able to move the quantum dots into the front of the LCD panel.’ Quantum dots are now being used to
replace the particularly inefficient colour filters in LCDs, enabling them to achieve up to three times more brightness, a further improved colour gamut, up to twice the energy efficiency, and viewing angles close to those currently offered by OLED televisions. ‘The only thing that won’t improve
further with this, is the ability to deliver absolute black. Therefore, quantum dot televisions will still lag behind in this,’ Virey remarked. ‘This is because LCD pixels operate by either letting through or blocking out the brightness from the backlight, and are unable to fully block out the backlight when producing dark pixels.’ While OLED televisions currently hold
this particular advantage over QLCDs, it is expected that upcoming developments in quantum dots will see this technology gap
close. ‘We are also working on developing direct emissive quantum dots, also known as electroluminescent quantum dots, which are similar to an OLED structure but with a quantum dot at the emitter layer,’ explained Yurek. In addition to providing even higher efficiencies, electroluminescent quantum dots are predicted to offer the same performance as OLED technology when producing perfect black levels, according to both Yurek and Virey. Similar to OLEDs, however, these new quantum dots will require their own manufacturing process and infrastructure to implement in televisions, which although requiring additional capital investment, could potentially lead to their uptake increasing further. ‘All the work we are doing on emissive quantum dot technologies relies on low- cost printing techniques, such as transfer printing, which could be really disruptive to the industry,’ explained Yurek. ‘Quantum dots can actually deliver on the promise of printed displays, which OLED manufacturers have experimented with but [have] not yet been able to solve.’ While electroluminescent quantum dot displays are not expected to enter the market for another four to five years, Yurek affirmed that the colour filter replacements will likely enter the market at the end of next year.
Making it mobile While OLEDs have competition from quantum dots for improving the colour gamut of TV displays, Virey believes, for mobile displays, OLEDs will dominate. ‘They are being widely used in many of the high-end models and will capture about 50 per cent of the mobile display market in the next five years,’ he said. Samsung has been very successful with small mobile displays. ‘Right now it has more than 99 per cent of the mobile display market; even the new iPhone X’s OLED display is supplied by Samsung,’ Virey added. ‘It was not as successful in scaling this technology up to large dimensions for televisions however.’ The advances in blue OLEDs could also
mean the display consumes less power, leading to longer battery life of mobile devices. Yurek, at Nanosys, does believe that quantum dots have a future in mobile displays. ‘As we move into the colour filter replacement and electroluminescent technology they will become very compelling for mobile displays, as the efficiency is so much greater, leading to extended battery life – a huge factor in the mobile industry.’ EO
November 2017 Electro Optics 17
Yole Développement
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