Fabrication of high aspect ratio nanostructures for reflective display

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Modern displays such as LCD and OLED displays are emissive displays, meaning they must emit and manipulate their own light in order to display an image. This is the root cause of their problems: it takes a lot of power to constantly be producing light and a display can drain up to about 50% of the battery life; and if the display is used outdoors, the daylight reflecting from the screen degrades the achievable contrast of the display or even make it unreadable. Reflective displays are the answer to these problems. Because they reflect the light that is currently in the environment, reflective displays do not need to waste energy producing their own light. Furthermore, because a reflective display's brightness is proportional to how much light is falling on it, these displays are easy to read even in direct sunlight. However, most reflective displays to date have suffered from high manufacturing costs and poor color quality. Recently, a novel display architacture was designed by the supporting company Thalo Inc. with cost, brightness and color quality in mind. A highly reflective backplane provides the high brightness needed, and additional control of the reflection spectrum gives high color quality. It would be ideal for devices which have low battery consumption and/or which are used in varied lighting, including smart watches and other wearables, and vehicle performance readouts for motorcycles and airplanes. The objective of the current project is to build one color layer for proof of concept of Thalo's display design.The layer consists of nanoscale grating structures with electrode patterned atop for each pixel. This collaborative research project will establish a first and potentially long-term linkage between the research group at the University of Waterloo and Thalo Inc., a Waterloo-based company. The success of this project will help Canadian companies to strengthen their market position through the development and implementation of novel technologies.