A two-year, £600,000 project involving two UK universities and
two SMEs is aiming to develop smart coatings that improve the
readability of flat-panel displays under bright sunlight.
With displays increasingly being used outdoors, in mobile
devices especially, but also for information display boards and
cash points, the Endsense project has been set up to investigate
thin film technology to improve their performance.
“Making these displays sunlight-readable is not impossible,”
said Dr Colin Cartwright, a lecturer at the University of Abertay
Dundee. “The key word here is ‘smart’ materials. We want to make
the display aware of its environment.”
Many of the improvements will be similar to the high performance
displays used in aviation, but instead of requiring multiple layers
– improved backlights, infra-red-blocking layers, coatings to
improve contrast ratio – the aim is to reduce cost and complexity
by combining multiple functions into a single layer.
“Our proposal is to integrate the functions into one or two
single layers,” said Cartwright. “There is a certain element of
speculation about it. It may be a question of levels of
success.”
Among the initial ideas are combining thin films for
transflective displays with polarising films and active functions
such as photochromics, and even embedded photovoltaic power
sources. The work is part-funded by the DTI.
Greenwich University will supply simulation expertise, modelling
mechanical, thermal and optical properties, and the SMEs Micro
Circuit Engineering and Thin Film Solutions will work on new
designs of screen assemblies with novel coatings. The University of
Dundee Abertay is handling the usability aspects.
“We want our designs to be more usable, so we will be
determining a unit of scale of usability,” said Cartwright.
University of Abertay
Dundee
Greenwich
University
Micro Circuit
Engineering