"Metasurface" nanoscale next-generation displays 100 times thinner, 10 times higher resolution and 50 percent lower power consumption

Researchers have developed a proof-of-concept technology that could pave the way for the next generation of displays beyond current LCDS and leds, allowing screens and electronics to become thinner, offering higher resolution and more energy efficient products.

A team at Nottingham Trent University, the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, has designed electrically adjustable arrays of nanoparticles called "metasurfaces" that could offer significant advantages over current liquid crystal displays.

Today's display market offers a variety of options, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. However, factors including production costs, longevity and energy consumption have made LCD technology the dominant and most popular technology for screens such as televisions and monitors.

The LCD unit is responsible for turning the transmitted light on and off, and is illuminated by a backlight, with polarizing filters in front and behind the pixels. They determine the size (resolution) of pixels and play an important role in managing the power consumption of devices.

The newly designed metasurface cell - with its adjustable and extraordinary light scattering properties - will replace the liquid crystal layer and do away with the need for a polarizer, which is responsible for much wasted light intensity and energy use in the display.

The cell surface is 100 times thinner than the liquid crystal cell, the resolution is 10 times higher, and the energy consumption is 50% lower.

As part of their research, the team demonstrated that pixels can be electrically programmed, and that by changing the temperature of the material, light switches nearly 20 times faster than human disgust response times.

The researchers believe their technique is compatible with modern electronic displays and fills a technological gap in tunable metasurfaces capable of effectively switching light at high frequencies.

"We have paved the way for breaking down the technological barrier by replacing the liquid crystal layer in current displays with a metassurface, allowing us to make affordable LCD free flat screens," said project leader Mohsen Rahmani, professor of engineering at Nottingham Trent University's School of Science and Technology and a Royal Society Wolfson Fellow.

"The most important metrics for flat-panel displays are pixel size and resolution, weight and power consumption," he said. We have solved each of these problems with our meta-display concept.

"On top of that, our new technology can significantly reduce energy consumption - which is good news considering the number of monitors and TV sets used in homes and businesses every day. We believe it is time to make LCD and LED displays obsolete, just as cathode ray tube (CRT) TVS have been for the past 20 to <> years.

Dragomir Neshev, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) and Professor of Physics at the Australian National University, said: "The capabilities of traditional displays have peaked and are unlikely to be significantly improved in the future due to multiple constraints. Today, people are looking for all-solid-state flat display technology with high resolution and fast refresh rate. We have designed and developed metasurface pixels that can be ideal for next-generation displays.

"Unlike liquid crystals, our pixels don't need polarized light to work, which would halve the energy consumption of the screen.

Khosro Zangeneh Kamali, a PhD scholar at the Australian National University and lead author of the study, said: "Metasurfaces proved to exhibit remarkable optical behaviour. However, inventing an effective way to control them remains the subject of a great deal of research. We propose electroprogrammable silicon metasurface, which is a multifunctional platform for programmable metasurface.

Dr Lei Xu, a member of the team from Nottingham Trent University, said: "There is huge scope for further improvement by employing AI and machine learning techniques to design and implement smaller, thinner and more efficient metasurface displays.

Professor Andrey Miroshnichenko, a member of the team from the University of New South Wales in Canberra, said: "Our pixels are made of silicon, which has a long useful life compared to the organic materials required for other existing alternatives. In addition, silicon is widely available, CMOS is compatible with mature technologies, and production costs are low.

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