MIT Study Lights Way for Bright, Efficient Quantum Dot LED TV Screens

Despite a step forward, don't expect the next level of TV panels to be widely marketed anytime soon.

Dashia Milden Editor

Dashia is the consumer insights editor for CNET. She specializes in data-driven analysis and news at the intersection of tech, personal finance and consumer sentiment. Dashia investigates economic shifts and everyday challenges to help readers make well-informed decisions, and she covers a range of topics, including technology, security, energy and money. Dashia graduated from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor's degree in journalism. She loves baking, teaching spinning and spending time with her family.

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In a summer full of heat waves and high temps, you're probably not focused on the energy efficiency of your TV or smartphone screen when your air conditioner is blasting. But you are probably wishing for brighter, bolder colors and pitch-black dark scenes for the Love Island finale or the rumored iPhone 18.

A group of MIT and Samsung researchers is looking to do just that -- give you better picture quality and energy efficiency for your future TV, VR headset and smartphone screens. A paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances demonstrates an advancement that could bring highly efficient new quantum dot LED technology to your living room sooner.

"With quantum dots, the color quality of the screen would be more visually appealing and more optically flexible. One can mix and match those quantum dot colors more precisely to generate any color that is needed," Vladimir Bulović, the study's senior author and a professor of emerging technology at MIT, said in a statement.

The researchers studied tiny changes that happen inside LEDs that use quantum dots, including slicing them into extremely thin slivers. Think of quantum dots as very small semiconductors that give precise colors and top-notch picture quality in our computers and TVs. However, researchers found key ways that the manufacturing process and lifespan for QD-LEDs could be improved.

QD-LEDs are complicated

One way researchers suggest improving QD-LEDs' longevity and efficiency is to put them in "an acrylate-based resin" to extend their lifespan. Doing so will help prevent the QD-LEDs from degrading so soon -- which could mean better-performing QD-LEDs and better picture quality for you.

Researchers tested this in a few ways, including examining red, green and blue QD-LEDs. They developed a way to slice a QD-LED thinly to see what happens at different layers of material, where they saw structural and chemical changes. When QD-LEDs merge, they lose their shape and release more hydrogen and oxygen, which can speed up degradation. Encapsulating the QD-LEDs in a resin helped.

That doesn't stop degradation completely, but slows it while improving efficiency and lifespan.

"This version of quantum dot LEDs would be better than anything that exists now -- simpler to make, more efficient, and higher performing," Bulović said. "This could open vistas into many more ways of thinking about this technology, not just for the sake of displays or lighting, but also for sensors, lasers, and so on."

A brighter future for TVs?

CNET Editor in Chief David Katzmaier, who's been reviewing TVs for more than 20 years, said the MIT study finding is exciting for the TV world.

"For years, we've suspected that self-illuminated or electroluminescent quantum dots could be the basis of TVs that deliver better image quality than the current champ, OLED," he said. "Quantum dots have been used for more than a decade in TVs with LED and OLED light sources, but electrically excited QD-LED promises significant improvement."

If this advancement can be commercialized, it could lead to better image quality and energy efficiency, which is increasingly important with larger screens and brighter HDR material, Katzmaier said. However, don't expect this technology any time soon. He predicts it will be years before this tech is available, and even longer before it becomes affordable enough for OLED or LED TVs.

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DASHIA MILDEN

Editor

Dashia is the consumer insights editor for CNET. She specializes in data-driven analysis and news at the intersection of tech, personal finance and consumer sentiment. Dashia investigates economic shifts and everyday challenges to help readers make well-informed decisions, and she covers a range of topics, including technology, security, energy and money. Dashia graduated from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor's degree in journalism. She loves baking, teaching spinning and spending time with her family. See full bio