Oxford is developing technology to create ultra-high-resolution flexible displays

The width of each “nanopixel” image is less than the thickness of a human hair (about 70 microns)

A team of experts from Oxford is currently working on an interesting technology, in the long term allowing to create flexible displays with ultra-high resolution.

Scientists managed to reduce the size of a single pixel, and very significantly, thanks to the creation of "sandwiches" of transparent electrodes and materials with a phase transition. This allows you to create nanometer points, pixels, the size of which is many times smaller than the size of pixels on modern, even the highest quality, displays.
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The discovery, as it happens, was made by chance, while studying the links between the optical and electrical properties of various materials with a so-called phase transition (ie, the material changes the crystal structure under the influence of, for example, electric current).

As such a material, the scientists decided to use an alloy of tellurium, antimony and germanium with the formula Ge2Sb2Te5 (approximately this alloy is used in RW compacts). A material several nanometers thick was placed between two plastic electrodes of a transparent electrode, and a weak current was passed. As a result, scientists were able to create the first such image, several tens of micrometers wide.

After that, scientists created a prototype ultra-pixel display, where they used “sandwiches” made of transparent electrodes and an alloy, as mentioned above, placed between the electrodes as pixels. The size of the site in this case amounted to 300 * 300 nanometers. In this image, you can do not only monochrome: the color depends on the thickness of the alloy between the electrodes.

Displays of a new type can be arbitrarily flexible, since the image is formed on ultrathin areas, with a thickness of several nanometers. The team of scientists has already created a prototype ultra-pixel flexible display from a lavsan film. To change the phase state of the alloy you need only 20 nanoseconds, that is, if we talk about video, then it will be displayed quite normally, there should be no blurring and “lags” in the frame change.

Scientists have already patented their technology, and are negotiating with major technology companies.

Via oxford