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IGZO display tech finally makes it to mass market "Low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS) is another alternative to a-Si that has higher electron mobility and thus excellent image quality, but LTPS is difficult and expensive to manufacture. One of the best examples of LTPS is the new Kindle Fire HDX, which is probably the only device on the market that has a better display than the iPad Air. According to Raymond Soneira at DisplayMate, the iPad Air’s use of IGZO reduces the display’s power consumption by 57% over last year’s iPad 4 — a huge reduction for a single generation." via ExtremeTech
How to build a "stealth" computer display "Brusspup specializes in optical illusion. He noticed that if you completely remove polarizer P1, an LCD display shows essentially uniform illumination with a varying pattern of polarization over the screen. However, as the human eye is not very sensitive to the polarization of light with which it sees the world, an LCD display from which the final polarizing film has been removed appears to be bright and featureless." via Gizmag
Are PC Displays Still Needed? "From the success of crowdfunding for cheap displays, there is clearly a need on the market for low-cost digital screens. The fact that prices for this equipment continue to drop will provide a stimulus to new and innovative uses for displays by businesses, especially by small and midsize companies where budgets are tight. Displays may eventually become a cost-saving commerce solution for advertising and marketing departments." via Midsize Insider
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How MIT Invented A Screen That Lets You Reach Through And Touch Things "They call it inFORM. Unveiled this week, the device employs 900 plastic pegs on a square grid that can be raised or lowered to form shapes. A depth camera tracks the shape and movement of the input (your hand, your dog... whatever) and displays it with the pegs." via International Science Times
Why Smartphone Makers Are Racing to Build Flexible Screens "Just as liquid-crystal displays supplanted cathode ray tubes years ago in televisions, Korean display makers are now concentrating their efforts in organic light-emitting diode screens, which offer more vivid colors and can be made even thinner than liquid-crystal displays, since they don't require a backlight. Display makers in Japan and Taiwan have also been experimenting with different types of flexible screens though they haven't been able to reach mass production." via The Wall Street Journal
What is the future of displays? Qualcomm's Toq Smartwatch Displays "The Toq uses MEMS to produce the IMOD effect. Interferometric Modulation creates colors in a different way than LCDS or OLEDS. Essentially, the MEMS that comprise the display have two elements: coated glass on top and reflective membranes on bottom. An air pocket between the two layers is what creates colors depending on what type of electrical charge is applied to the pixel." via ReadWrite
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New liquid crystal structure reported by Kent State researchers "A research group at Kent State University has described and documented the structure of a new type of liquid crystal that had been predicted theoretically, but never seen. The new "twist-bend nematic" liquid crystal, one with a spiral twist, was observed by a Kent State research group led by Oleg D. Lavrentovich, Ph.D., D.Sc., trustees research professor of chemical physics and former director of the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State. The new type of liquid crystal, akin to a new species in biology, might enable new technologies, ranging from faster-switching display devices to biological sensors, Lavrentovich said." via Record-Courier
Is Ink-Jet Printing the Key to Next-Generation OLED Displays? "Kateeva’s setup—available as of today to display makers—features a movable platform that precisely positions glass panels or plastic sheets large enough for six 55-inch displays beneath custom print heads. Each head contains hundreds of nozzles tuned to deposit picoliter-scale droplets in exact locations to build up the pixels of a display. The company says the tool can be incorporated fairly easily into existing display production lines. Kateeva cofounder and president Conor Madigan says the system, based on the same technology in consumer ink-jet printers, eliminates the need for a step in the conventional manufacturing scheme that increases the risk of defects in the displays." via MIT Technology Review
New chip can detect gestures in front of tiny wearable displays "A fledgling company, Chirp Microsystems is developing a gesture-based operating system to work with a new chip that uses sound, rather than vision, to track the user’s movements. ...Inspired by medical technology, the system uses ultrasound, rather than light, to detect hand gestures within a range of about a meter. The system can sense gestures that don’t occur directly in front of its display, and it uses far less battery power than existing gesture camera-based interfaces: It runs up to 30 hours continuously on a tiny battery." via Singularity Hub
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Touchscreen display coating market to see major shift in technology "Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) now has a 95 percent market share for touch-screen transparent conductive coatings. At the same time, shipments of non-ITO films are forecast by IHS to increase 320 percent this year. By the end of 2017, shipments of alternative technologies--such as silver nanowire, copper mesh, silver mesh, silver halide and silver nano particle--will account for 34 percent of the market, reducing ITO's share to 66 percent." via FierceMobileIT
Could Biological Semiconductors Transform Tech Industry? "The semiconductors are known as quantum dots and are made from naturally occurring organic compounds called peptides, short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. ...In a demonstration, Mr. Rosenman shone a blue light (the backlight in an LCD TV is blue) onto tubes containing different solutions of quantum dots. The tubes lit up in red, green and blue—the constituents of any display. “There is a cost saving of about 10 times compared to other displays,” said Mr. Myersdorf. “The manufacturing process is the same as for making OLEDs.” An OLED is an organic light-emitting diode, commonly found in some smartphones and TVs." via The Wall Street Journal
New Twists On Autofocus, Multitouch, And Energy Harvesting "Qeexo has not built a new MEMS device; rather, it’s using information from the accelerometers already built into smartphones and tablets in a new way. ...Qeexo’s software analyzes the vibration generated when you touch the screen and determines whether you’re using your fingertip, knuckle, fingernail, or a stylus. Apps can then use that information to allow different types of touches to perform different function—a knuckle swipe, for example, could highlight text instead of scroll down the page; a fingernail could bring up a menu. It seems simple, but it’s not so easy to implement: Schwarz said she’s met with manufacturers who aren’t interested at first, then come back and tell her that they tried and failed to replicate the technology and are now ready to talk." via IEEE Spectrum
How To Add a Touch Interface to your Hardware with Touch Board "Want to create an interactive design with touch interface? Well, the Touch Board may be just what you are looking for. Arduino compatible, the Touch Board comes with 12 capacitive touch channels and will respond to anything conductive that is connected to one of the channels. You can turn on a light, ring a doorbell, or even play midi music, all from your very own Touch Board." via Engineering.com
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