by Tom Simonite, Technology Review
Workers in Qualcomm’s factory in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, operate the same kind of equipment found in other display-making factories on the island, which are the source of more than a third of the LCD panels in new computers, tablets, and smart phones. Yet displays from this plant are like no others. They create color images by borrowing an optical trick at work in the iridescent wings of some butterflies. Each pixel in the new Mirasol display is made from microscopic structures that function like imperfect mirrors, reflecting back incoming light but altering its color. Full-color images can be created even in direct sunlight. Since these displays use reflected light rather than emitting their own as conventional displays do, they consume far less energy than LCD displays. Yet unlike other low-power displays, such as the one in Amazon’s black-and-white Kindle e-reader, these render full-color images and can refresh quickly enough to show video.
http://www.technologyreview.com/demo/427705/iridescent-displays/
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