Quantum Materials Corp. ((San Marcos, Texas), a startup founded in 2008, has teamed up with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and taken an option to license so-called "thick-shell" quantum dot patented technology.
This has the potential to improve solid-state brightness of LED lighting and image displays 10 to 100 times more than conventional nanocrystal quantum dots, QMC said.
The LANL developed technology significantly suppresses "blinking" which is a tendency quantum dots have to turn off momentarily. The LANL scientists discovered that thick-shelled quantum dots reduce this intermittency of fluorescence by separating absorption by the shell and emission. The thick-shell technology has also demonstrated the ability to extend the service life of quantum dots exposed to higher temperatures and/or high intensity light.
As well as operating in the visible spectrum LANL has created thick-shell "giant" quantum dots that show near-infrared (NIR) emission. This could have applications in medical imaging, lasers, telecommunication and solar photovoltaics, QMC said.
"We believe that the number of quantum dot performance improvements afforded by adding thick-shell technology to our Tetrapod Quantum Dots will set us significantly ahead of our competition. Our ability to manufacture uniform industrial-scale quantities of quantum dots engineered for optimal application-specific performance parameters will expedite acceptance of these new technologies by display and lighting manufacturers," said Stephen Squires, Quantum Materials CEO and founder, in a statement.
David Doderer, QMC vice president of R&D said that the combination of thick-shell and tetrapod quantum dots would be "revolutionary" in terms of improving quantum dot half life, stability and color rendering.
The technology was made available through LANL's Express Licensing Program. Jennifer Hollingsworth, of the Center for Integrated Technologies (CINT) at LANL is the principal investigator for thick-shell quantum dots.
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