Nanoresonators Create Ultra-High-Res Displays

TuurlijkNiet writes with this excerpt from Linux for Devices: "Eat your heart out, 'Retina display.' A new technology unveiled yesterday will allow creating pixels eight times smaller than the ones on Apple's iPhone 4, eliminate the need for polarizer layers, and allow screens to make much more efficient use of available light, say University of Michigan researchers. ... The pixels in the nanoresonator displays are about ten times smaller than those on a typical computer screen, and about eight times smaller than the pixels on the iPhone 4, which are about 78 microns, according to Guo. Such pixel densities could make the technology useful in projection displays, as well as wearable, bendable or extremely compact displays, according to the researchers."

Re:cool

[tlhIngan]

Now that they can make pixels so small that they can only be singled out from distances closer than my eyes can focus, they can finally put some effort into making.. i got nothing, i don't see the point of this.

Well, for a display on its own, it's not terribly useful. After all, increase the pixel density beyond the iPhone 4 and you'll be adding useless pixels that take memory (framebuffer), power (all those pixels require controllers behind them, plus your 2D and 3D accellerators have to push that many more pixels) and size (enlarged bitmaps and the like take more space). They say an iPad with the PPI of the iPhone 4 would become something like 3000x5000 pixels-ish, which we're talking is latest graphics card style power to render all those pixels.

HOwever, the use is mentioned in the summary - those pico projectors. A small, light, bright, 1080p+ capable projector is probably doable, rather than the WVGA or less resolutions you get now typically.

Re:cool

[Defenestrar]

Every layer of polarization cuts the available light in half. Creating a display with pixels smaller than the unaided eye can view without these is actually huge because the current limit in preventing a "realistic" display (i.e. you can't tell the difference between the display and looking out a window) is actually in the contrast resolution (difference between light and dark) which still has a very long way to go before it hits human eye capacity. Freeing up more light allows for brighter whites and perhaps even the possibility of layering displays to get darker blacks (depending on the transparency of "black.")

Magnify where?

[fyngyrz]

Might be interesting in combination with other technology, though... your idea of a projector incorporates magnification. What if the magnification was in your eye? Imagine a biomod that gives you up to 8x optical magnification; switch it in, and you'd be looking at the details on the display, if you wanted to -- they'd be there all the time.

Another thing is stereo output (mistakenly characterized as "3d" by today's marketing droids.) With pixels this tiny, it might be a lot easier to have a set for each eye that are set into what amounts to a wrinkled substrate; one set would direct light at the left eye, while the other did so at the right. Resolution wouldn't suffer because it's still below your ability to resolve the pixels.

You could put a full-HD display in just a corner of your sunglasses, and drop an optical layer over it so that when you were looking into it, you could see detail, depending on the angle your eye created against the optical layer; that would also help manage focus distance issues.

HUDs might be implemented better because the pixels are so small that they just wouldn't be visible when off; a (very) thin line of this material would be like an ultra-thin wire in the glass... but when emitting light at night, would become strikingly visible... depending on the light output, that might even work in the day. Depends on where they're getting the light from, I would think

Instruments like microscopes, telescopes, binoculars, cameras... anything you put your eye to, really... the could benefit from a very tiny display and some small optics to give you status / info on what you were observing.

And hey, how fun would it be for an electronics tech to have an oscilloscope display built into his safety goggles?

I could see a day when the entire multicore computer is in your glasses. You talk to it; it talks to you through the earpiece; display is both full-screen in one corner, and HUD all over the glass; antennae are in the arms of the glasses.

Anyway, just some ideas. There must be tons of applications for really tiny displays, as opposed to big displays with pixels you can't resolve.

Re:come on, nerds

[clone53421]

A LCD uses two polarizing filters. One of them “flips” its polarization 90 degrees when you apply a current.

Depending on the current, the polarizing filters can either be lined up (0 degrees) or perpendicularly aligned (90 degrees), or anywhere in-between.

When the polarizing filters are lined up, the backlight shines through (or the ambient light from the room is reflected off of the back of the display. When the polarizing filters are perpendicular, the pixel is black.

The color itself is created by a normal filter; individual red, green, and blue sub-pixels are used to create any RGB value.