It seems that a new OLED display from Samsung and Stanford is capable of managing over 10,000 metasurface pixels per inch, according to researchers.
The news comes from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’s magazine/website IEEE Spectrum. It said that researches had found that the way light is built up in this display results in double the luminescence efficiency than that of “standard color-filtered white OLED displays” and “higher color purity”.
The screen emits white light between a silver film reflective layer and a metasurface reflective layer with OLED films, with the metasurface containing nano-pillars within each of its pixel’s four subpixels that manipulate the white light. “In each pixel, the subpixel with the most densely packed nano-pillars yields red light; the one with moderately densely packed nano-pillars yields green light; and the two with the least densely packed nano-pillars yield blue light,” wrote the website.
This display could be used for virtual reality in the near future, according to Mark Brongersma, an optical engineer at Stanford University, due to its high-resolution being helpful in creating “the illusion of reality” as the displays in VR headsets are situated near the user’s eyes. Further off, its metasurface layer could be used to trap light in solar cells and light sensors.
It doesn’t seem like 10,000 pixels per inch is the limit either. IEEE Spectrum quoted study lead author and Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology nanophotonic engineer Won-Jae Joo as saying, "According to our simulation results, the theoretical scaling limit of pixel density is estimated to be 20,000 pixels per inch. The challenge is the trade-off in brightness when the pixel dimensions go below one micrometer.”
