Growing industrial adoption of quantum dot technology by R&D and blue-chip organisations has led to a greater demand for the bulk manufacture of the product.
South Korean (Samsung, LG), Chinese (TCL, Hisense, Changhong) and Japanese (Sony) TV manufacturers had such TVs on display.
[10] In February 2018, the company announced a Material Development and Supply Agreement with an undisclosed US corporation, to scale up and mass-produce novel nanoparticles for advanced electronic devices.
There are similar regulations in place, or soon to be implemented, worldwide including in Norway, Switzerland, China, Japan, South Korea and California.
In response to a push from customers not to include cadmium in household electronics products, Nanoco has developed a range of CFQD® quantum dots, free of any regulated heavy metals.
Quantum dots can be tuned for specific absorption bands by adjusting the size of the particle and simply applying a layer onto the surface of a CMOS image sensor extends its sensitivity range out to this region.
Applications for NIR and SWIR CMOS image sensors are wide-ranging and include biometric facial recognition, optical diagnostics, LiDAR and night vision.
One of the shortcomings of this technology is that the white LEDs provide insufficient emission in the green and red areas of the visible spectrum, limiting the range of colours that can be displayed.
Due to the viewer seeing the LEDs directly this allows for higher contrast, response times and efficiency over traditional LCD technology, and their small size and high power density opens them up for wearable applications such as smartwatches and AR/VR headsets.
A thin layer of quantum dots can be applied to the top emitting surface of the μLED to down-convert the emission to those required for a full colour display.
[19] The ability to conjugate quantum dots to a wide range of antibodies opens up a variety of applications both in vitro and in vivo, from cell staining, to point-of-care diagnostics, to photodynamic therapy and tumour demarcation.
In 2020, Nanoco received funding from Innovate UK to develop a heavy metal-free quantum dot testing kit for the accurate and rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 from saliva samples.