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By Mary Stone published 26 May 22
A quantum dot display that doesn't require a backlight
The world's first 8K self-emitting QLED display has been unveiled at the Society for Information Display's Display Week in California.
Designed by Chinese technology firm BOE, the 55-inch 8K AMQLED screen differs considerably from the QLED TVs currently on the market. Instead of using a quantum dot film sandwiched between an LED backlight and an LCD panel, it contains quantum dot nanocrystals that can produce their own light when placed in an electric field. This means that, as with OLED, it doesn't require a backlight, and each pixel can be individually dimmed. BOE claims that AMQLED technology offers many of the same advantages associated with OLED, such as high contrast and wide colour gamut, but with a long lifespan.
BOE's 8K AMQLED (Active Matrix Quantum Dots Light Emitting Diode) display integrates its quantum dot nanocrystals with a Thin Film Transistor substrate, and inkjet printed control circuits. The company says that inkjet printing is used to produce all of the panel's functional layers except the cathode, resulting in a high yield and considerably reduced manufacturing costs, assets that rival self-emissive technology microLED doesn't yet have.
Previously BOE has exhibited smaller, lower-resolution versions of AMQLED technology, including 5-inch and 14-inch displays in 2017, followed by a 55-inch 4K model in 2020. Its latest prototype is still in development but demonstrates a considerable step forward in the technology and the potential for eventual mass production.
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Read our review of Sony's XR-55A95K: The world’s first QD-OLED TV
Mary is a staff writer at What Hi-Fi? and has over a decade of experience working as a sound engineer mixing live events, music and theatre. Her mixing credits include productions at The National Theatre and in the West End, as well as original musicals composed by Mark Knopfler, Tori Amos, Guy Chambers, Howard Goodall and Dan Gillespie Sells.
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