Transparent flexible memory

Researchers at the RICE university have managed to create a transparent memory made by silicon oxide sandwiched between graphene electrodes and supported by plastic. The resulting product, as you can see in the photo on the left, is completely transparent.

The work is the result of a 5 year program that created all the tiny pieces needed for such a memory.

The researched started to find a way to store bits in a material that was impervious to cosmic radiations and a few chips have indeed been tested aboard the Space Station in orbit.

The researches noted that a strong voltage could break strings of carbon atoms but a lower voltage would cause them to break and then to rejoin. Associating 1 to interruption and 0 to continuity can make for a storage device.

Clearly, moving from a conceptual possibility to something that can work, and be produces by industry at low cost and in large amount, is quite a different matter. This explains the  time it took the researchers to reach this point.

A bonus, not originally planned, is the transparency. Silicon oxide is like glass, it is transparent and the carbon layer is just one atom thick, and so it is transparent as well.

A transparent memory can be placed in windshields keeping them transparent. Today we have means to project on the windshield information so that one can overlay information on the line of sight of the driver.

This overlaid projection, however, is no particularly good and requires a lot of power to make the information visible in daylight. It would be much better if one can have the windshield doubling up as a screen.

Indeed, this is what I saw at a both at the ITU workshop in Dubai. I took a picture of it and it is shown here. The visibility is very good also in full daylight so it can really be a solution in a few years.

At the University of Oregon a team of researchers have been studying ways to create transparent electronics, something that would allow creating screens on tabletops or in windshields, and more.

Flash memory based on zinc-tin oxide

One approach is to use crystalline material (crystals are transparent), another is to use substances that are transparent. The first approach has already led to demonstrate transparent batteries. The second has followed different paths where the major obstacle is the economic sustainability.

Now they have developed a composite based on zinc and tin oxide that is both transparent and cheap.

A further advantage is that elemental transistors built with this composite are smaller and use less energy than the equivalent built using silicon.

For this reason they expect the industry to shift from silicon to zinc-tin oxide as flash memory (a multi billion $ market) reaches its physical limits. In the photo a first prototype of zinc-tin oxide based flash memory. Interestingly, the zinc-tin oxide transistors work differently from the ones made in silicon. The latters operate on electronic charges, whilst the former operate on resistance. They are “memristors” and this provides them with some interesting properties, like ” remembering” previous states.

In perspective, this technology can be applied to embed electronics invisibly in a variety of objects and surfaces. That will lead to surfaces doubling up as screens and to the possibility of having visual interfaces on many objects as shown in the Corning video: A day made of glass.

Flexible screens are already available, although to see them you need to go to a research lab. There are a few small flexible screens on the market but they are usually black and white and you won’t associate them to a television screen.

A Samsung prototype based on AMOLED technology

Samsung has been on of the pioneer (see one of their prototype in the picture on the left, along with Plastic Logic that was planning to use one of its flexible screens in a tablet but the project never came to the market.

Now the Korean Government has announced a funding for research to lead to mass market flexible 60″ display by 2017.

The Korean Government has chosen LG as the leading research lab to pursue this goal; for LG this is a significant victory over Samsung. The Government expects that the availability of such screens will transform many ambient, providing visual interaction everywhere.

This translate, in competitive terms, to a potential export valued at 56 billion $ and creating over 840,000 jobs in Korea. Given the track record I am betting they will succeed.

This reinforces my belief that by the end of this decade we will become accustomed to interactive walls, and soon after to screens substituting products labels. I can see myself walking down an isle in a department store and seeing the tomato cans labels transforming themselves into a giant screen attracting my attention….

You may have noticed that currently stereoscopic displays have only one parallax direction, the horizontal one.This means that you can look explore an object tridimensionally only moving to his right or left, but not up or down, which would require vertical parallax capability of the display. This applies to the 3D Cinema or TV set solutions that are based on eyewear, or to autostereoscopic displays like those used on the Nintendo 3DS.

Even more complex displays, like those developed and commercialized by Holografika, a hungarian company that patented a ray projection holographic display, are offering a mono-parallactic stereoscopic view: using several optical light projecting modules that are hitting each singular voxel (volumetric pixel) onto the “holographic” screen, they are able to recreate a wider angle view then other techniques can today. Holografika’s technique consists in projecting several different angular views of an object on the screen that can be perceived by the viewer just slightly moving on his left or right, as we would do in a real life object exploration.

Now if you try to watch the upper or lower sides of this virtual object, you will get always the same view of it, as in fact the system is not able to perform vertical parallax, giving back a sensation of fakeness.

A new kind of display has been invented by Holovision that can create high-resolution, three-dimensional moving images that can be viewed with full parallax by people in different locations without special eyewear.

Holovision volumetric display based on MEMS.

This display leverages on the future features brought by MEMS (Micro Electrical Mechanical Systems) that in the next years will be used to create a matrix of moving display elements to guide light at the level of individual display elements (such as voxels). MEMS will be able to spin light at individual voxel level in all directions, thus dynamically recreating a volumetric image.

Array of spinning microlenses at voxel (volumetric pixel) level

Such a revolutionary volumetric display system will have also consequences in terms of all the data that has to be elaborated and transmitted, requiring graphics processing units and transmission channel capabilities to perform several times more than today.

The display market is flooded today by LCD, with a limited share of Plasma and an even more limited share of OLED. The dimension of the pixel in plasma screens limits their application to very large display and the production cost (and limited life span) of OLED limits their use in some top of the line cell phones.

NED, Nano Emissive Display are ready, in the labs, but are still years away and probably they will have their time as 4k screens will come to be an object of desire with an affordable price, probably in the second part of this decade.

The Quantum Dot display engineered by Samsung

Now Samsung has shown that the Quantum Dot technology can be transformed into real display, as reported in a recent paper in Nature Photonics, summarized by Technology Review.

Quantum Dot displays promise to be brighter than current LCD (therefore better to see in a lighted environment) and to consume 1/10 of the energy.

Presently their life time is estimated around 10,000 hours (a bit too short, however remember that the first plasma screens had a lifetime of 5,000 hours) and their consumption is about the same of today’s LCD.

One interesting aspect is that they can be created on plastic film, therefore can be bendable. Imagine using them as labels on tomato cans! Quite away in time but we have seen how fast technology can progress.

The real challenge, as experience shows, is the huge volume of LCD production that is leading to continuous, even though linear, innovation. They keep getting better and it is difficult for any underdog technology to take their place.

The future will bring us many more screens, according to some futurists any surface will dub into a screen. These are not just dreams or wishful thinking. Researchers are at work to make it happen.

At the University of Washington Ryder Ziola, a graduate student, has developed Oasis, a system that transform a kitchen tabletop into a screen. He didn’t do that alone but working with researchers at Intel led by Beverly Harrison. Oasis has been demonstrated few days ago at a conference in Mountain View, CA, USA.

If you place a bell pepper or a steak on the tabletop a hidden camera pick up the image and a computer recognizes it. A projector will send images, clips and information on the tabletop relevant to the object that has been identified. It may be a recipe or even a warning for your cholesterol intake.

Also your hands are recognised and the system can tell if you are touching the surface or not. Hence it can use the movement of your hands for interaction. Touch the tabletop once and you see the timer appear, place to ingredients on the top and you get advice on how to mix them. You can obviously cancel what is being presented to you by a swipe of your hand.

The projector is made by Microvision whilst the image recognition is done by a PrimeSense application.

The system needs to learn about new objects and teaching it is easy.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25694/?nlid=3199&a=f

I feel that the possibility of a seamless interaction with the environment merging the physical and the internet world will increase enormously our knowledge space. We will be able to learn in a seamless and continuous way at all times, in any place.

It will also create a world that will be quite different from the one we are used to.

Our dog loves to sniff. We love to watch! Technology has constrained us in the amount of visual interactions with objects because screens are costly. In the last years we have seen many more objects including a screen, usually a small and black and white one: microwave ovens, washing machines, copying machines, fax, car cockpits…

In the future new display technology will be available, at a lower cost, and many more objects will embed a screen, leading to a change in the way we interact with them.

A point in case is the technology announced by HP: a plastic substrate, bendable to the point you can wrap it up like a scroll. It looks like a silver wrapping paper, the one you would use to wrap presents but it contains thousands of transistors per square centimetre and an equivalent number of pixels that are good at displaying colours as those we find in a flat screen monitor. And they are much cheaper.

HP is working together with Phicot, a manufacturer of thin film electronics, to set up a pilot plant able to produce over 46,000 square metre of this display per year. The target cost is 90$ per square metre.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25561/?nlid=3166&a=f

I doubt that we can see this technology commercially available next year but I bet we are going to see plenty of it in this decade. I can easily imagine entire walls made up with these displays. They won’t substitute existing LCD, that still have a much better quality, but they will transform many of today’s surfaces in living videos. And that will change our perception of ambient and things.

eReaders have started to hit the mass market. After the success of the Kindle reader several others have appeared to compete on a growing market. Those eReaders were (are) based on eInk technology, very good for reading in the sunshine but with a long switching time making it impossible to display video. Besides, no colour can be displayed.

A few months ago Apple released the iPad. A wonderful screen (LCD technology) but a bit heavier (it consumes more power, hence it requires a heavier battery) and difficult to read in the sunshine.

Can we hope for a mixture of these characteristics, a technology easy on the eyes, providing a bright and beautiful screen supporting colours and video and with a low power consumption?

An American start up, Pixtronix, http://www.pixtronix.com/ , claims it has the right technology to fulfil this hope: their screen is backlit, like an LCD, but also reflects ambient light thus supporting an easier to read monochrome mode.

MEMS for a single pixel - Pixtronix technology

Each pixel in the display is made up of a tiny silicon shutter based on a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS). This shutter open and close to emit red, blue and green light in sequence creating the illusion of colours. When the shutter is closed we see … black.

Unlike LCD screens this technology does not require filters, polarizing films or liquid crystal. Hence the backlight illumination can be less intense and consume much less power, 25% of a typical LCD screen. When the backlight illumination is turned off the pixel reflects the ambient light when open, and it is black when closed.

I have already reported of the Mirasol Technology, by Qualcomm. The Mirasol technology is even less power consuming since it does not require backlighting but the quality of video display is low, with a grainy image.

Pixtronix is not alone in its search for new technologies to display text, images, video and we can rest assured that our hopes for the perfect screen will be met, soon.

We get 3D vision because we have two eyes (and one brain). The different angle through which any object appears to each eye is what makes 3D perception possible. Since closer objecs create wider angle difference in the eyes vision we get more 3D perception from them. As objects move further away from our eyes they tend to become “flatter” losing the third dimension. Light (and the contrast generated by illumination) is a further factor in the perception (this one used by the brain) to single out edges and derive depth.
The problem is when you start with a two dimensional image: the angle difference is no longer there and the depthness relies only on the contrast and difference in illumination to provide clues to our brain.
Interestingly, our brain is wired (through experience) to interpret illumination in a very specific way, that is, assuming the light is coming from above. That goes back to the time when the light was provided by the Sun only. This creates some curious effect. By chaging the direction of illumination from above to from below what appears as concave becomes convex, what is perceved as etched looks like a bas-relief.
To provide the “angle” difference to the eyes researchers have created technology that selectively sends information to each eye, either by filtering colours (those red and green glasses of some years ago), by polarised lenses blocking the vision of images alternatively so that one image gets to one eye and the following one, slightly off center to the other.
One way or the other you have to wear glasses and the effect requires that the images are seen from a given area. Not very natural indeed.
Now Microsoft has announced the creation a a lens to be placed over the screen able to direct the light to very specific places, in particular to your right or left eye. A camera is tracking the eyes position (and movement) and projects the images accordingly. The system is capable of sending images to two viewers, independently of where they are with respect to the screen, providing a 3D perception or to four viewer but providing the usual 2D perception.
Previous systems based on lenticular lenses over the screen required the viewer to view the images from a very specific point at a certain distance from the screen. As the person moved away from that “sweet spot” the effect degrades and some nausea may also be felt.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25524/?a=f

Some people would say that this is not really a 3D projection since only 2 people can see that as 3D at any given time. Anyhow, it is an interesting step in the direction of getting ever more realistic images in our homes.
Do not expect this technology to be available any time soon, though.

LCD is a great technology to the eye! It has provided us with big flat screens at a cost that is becoming more and more affordable. Its progress has been amazing. In ten years it moved from being a dream (with several problems like burned out pixels) to become part of our home landscape.

However, as techies know, it is very inefficient. The light used to illuminate the pixel has to cross several layers and by the time it gets out of the screen to reach our eyes 90% of it has gone lost. A 10% efficiency is not something to be proud of.

No wonder that research is going on to look for alternative solutions. One that has been demonstrated this week is called Quatum Dot.

Quantum Dot nano spikes (below) and first display prototype

The problem is that with LCD the white light generated by the lamp is filtered and only the part of the spectrum with the right colour gets to go across the screen (green, blue and red). The Quantum Dot technology convert the white light (made by all the wavelenght forming the visible light) into the right wavelenght using spikes (nanometric ones…) to convert the various wavelenght to the one appropriate for that particular pixel (either green, blue or red).

This increase the efficiency (by 10% non much but still…) and provide a better colour gamut.

We should expect to see this technology in our next television, provided we wait till next year to change our present model.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25460/?nlid=3065&a=f

The Quantum Dot technology has been created by Nanosys, http://www.nanosysinc.com/. Their slogan is “Remaking the way things are made”.

As a matter of fact, smart materials are going to increase tremendously our abilities to shape new products and this decade is going to see their entrance on the stage. It is probably the first time that humankind is thinking about building things the same way that nature does, bottom up, not top down.