report
8.3.5 Additional demand for research

For nanotechnology-based displays to become widely used there are a number of highly demanding criteria that would need to be met. These can be separated by technology area:

FEDs

One of the reasons that FED research appears to have lessened over the last couple of years is the daunting prospect of competing on cost with technologies like LCD and PDP. These are both technologies that have benefited form massive investment in production efficiency in order to compete in a market with high price competition.

Other research directions for FEDs include controlling the emission properties of nanotubes. This is a function of the both the nanotubes themselves, finding ways to control chirality and the proportion of length to width, and ensuring that nanotubes are spaced so as to work most effectively

Deposition methods are another important area of research, with a wide range of methods used to attach nanotubes to a substrate. Investigation of low cost methods such a spray deposition would be very important.

There is also an engineering challenge of device assembly, ensuring that the FET structure supports the integrity of the vacuum interior without using interior spacers which interfere with the image.

OLED

The most pressing area of research in OLED is in organic materials for the emissive and conductive layer. Current OLEDs suffers from a short lifetime of the films (it appears that blue organic film is particularly prone to failure).

There is also a manufacturing challenge of applying organic layers to the substrate - some substrates require high temperature processes which affect the organic layer. Low cost production methods are required for OLED to truly take off, and therefore research into roll to roll printing or inkjet printing are very important.

As has previously been described, research is also being carried out into packaging of OLED devices, and to develop TFTs which are compatible with flexible substrates.