Laboratory equipment manufacturers given brighter screen option

Laboratory equipment manufacturers may be able to make displays with greater brightness and energy efficiency in the years to come, following research conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Department of Energy facility looked into the synthetic production of a polymer already used widely in televisions and light-emitting diodes.

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), or PEDOT, also has applications in solar panels, leading the laboratory's scientist Bobby Sumpter to call it "one of the most successfully used semiconducting polymers on the planet".

Now, supercomputers at the laboratory have been used to analyse the success rates achieved in growing short but highly structured chains of the polymer synthetically.

The findings could have an impact on display products from consumer electronics to the high-end output of laboratory equipment manufacturers.

PEDOT is just one of the nanomaterials being investigated by the US Department of Energy, which explains that an understanding of them allows specific functionality such as efficiency, low weight or high strength to be tailored into designs.