Thanks to the narrow line width and high brightness, colloidal quantum dot (CQD) lasers show promising applications in next-generation displays. However, CQD laser-based displays have yet to be demonstrated because of two challenges in integrating red, green, and blue (RGB) lasers: absorption from red CQDs deteriorates the optical gain of blue and green CQDs, and imbalanced white spectra lack blue lasing due to the high lasing threshold of blue CQDs. Herein, we introduce a facile surfactant-free self-assembly method to assemble RGB CQDs into high-quality whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) RGB lasers with close lasing thresholds among them. Moreover, these RGB lasers can lase nearly independently even when they are closely integrated, and they can construct an ultrawide color space whose color gamut is 105% of that of the BT.2020 standard. These combined strategies allow us to demonstrate the first full-color liquid crystal displays using CQD lasers as the backlight source.
American Chemical Society
CQD lasers are solid sate lasers used in a range of applications, spectroscopy, biosensors, and printing. The interesting thing about this research, how it adds to the body of knowledge, is the use of CQD lasers as a backlight source, which is a novel approach, and has some potential repercussions for display manufacturing – there is the possibility of bidirectional use of CQD lasers in displays as both sources of light and color, and as functional sensors. It is only in the past couple of years that CQD lasers have grown to become a practical technology, slowly making their way out of the lab.
Reference
Chen W, Wang L, Liu R, Shen H, Du J, Fan F. Self-Assembled and Wavelength-Tunable Quantum Dot Whispering-Gallery-Mode Lasers for Backlight Displays. Nano Lett. 2023 Jan 25;23(2):437-443. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03409. Epub 2023 Jan 11. PMID: 36630612.
