Quantum Dot Display Science and Technology

Chapter 4Quantum Dot Enhancement Film

Zhong Sheng Luo, Jeff Yurek

Shoei Electronic Material Inc. (DBA Nanosys), Milpitas, CA, USA

4.1 Introduction

In late September 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hosted a private press event in Seattle to unveil a new lineup of Kindle-branded tablets [1]. Unknown to all but perhaps a few in attendance, one of those devices, a 7-inch tablet called the Kindle Fire HDX 7, contained quantum dot enhancement film (QDEF) – a groundbreaking display component for liquid crystal displays (LCDs). This innovation would become one of the first mass-market consumer applications of quantum dot (QD) technology and ultimately the predominant QD component in subsequent commercial implementations.

The story of QDEF’s commercialization is the culmination of decades of dedicated research and development across academia and industry. At the same time, QDEF’s arrival in commercial displays marked a major milestone in the display industry’s 60-year-long search for an optimal color solution for consumer displays that began with the first color TVs of the 1950s.

When QDs were first discovered in the early 1980s, their commercial applications were not immediately obvious. The research problem presented by this new type of colloidal semiconductor, whose bandgap could be controlled by size, was fascinating. To early researchers, the technology seemed to have potential implications for future semiconductor designs, but what to do with the particles themselves? As early QD ...