Comment by thisislife2
10 hours ago
Since you are knowledgable about this, do you have any idea what happened to Mirasol technology? I was fascinated by those colour e-paper like displays, and disappointed when plans to manufacture it was shelved. Then I learnt Apple purchased it but it looks more like a patent padding purchase than for tech development as nothing has come out of it form Apple too. Is it in some way still being developed or parts of its research tech being used in display development?
Being a key technology architect for it (not the core inventor), I know all about it, and then some more!
I cannot however talk publicly about it. :-(
It has been a disappointment for me as well. I had worked on it for nearly eight years. The idea was so interesting--using thin-film interference for creating images is akin to shaping Newton's rings into arbitrary images, something which even Newton would not have imagined! The demos and comparisons we had shown to various industry leaders and sometimes publicly were often instantly compelling. The people/engineers in the team were mostly the best I have ever worked with, and with whom I still maintain a great connection. But unfortunately, there were problems (not saying how much tech how much people) that were recognized by some but never got (timely) addressed. And a tech like it does not exist till date.
I do not think anything on it is being developed further.
The earliest of the patents would have expired by now.
Liquavista, Pixtronics, etc., have been alternative display technologies that also ultimately didn't make the impact desired, AFAIK.
Meanwhile, LCDs developed high pixel densities (which led to pressures on mirasol tech too), Plasma got sidelined. EInk displays have since then made good progress, though, in my opinion, are still far from colors and speeds that mirasol had. And of course, OLED, Quantum dots, ...
My fantasy display would be some kind of reflective-mode display that can passively show static images like e-ink, have partial updates like MIP LCD in wearables, response times like modern LCD and AMOLED, and "super-real" contrast/gain.
I.e. actually do wavelength conversion to not just reflect a narrow-pass filtered version of the ambient light, but convert that broad spectrum energy into the desired visuals, so it isn't always inherently dimmer than the environment. I can only imagine this being either:
1. some wild materials science stuff that manages interference
2. some wild materials science stuff that controls multi-photon fluorescence
3. some wild materials science stuff to fuse photoelectric and electroemissive functions in the same panel. i.e. not really passive but extremely low loss active system to double-convert the ambient light that can follow the power curve of available light
>> My fantasy display would be some kind of reflective-mode display that can passively show static images like e-ink, have partial updates like MIP LCD in wearables, response times like modern LCD and AMOLED, and "super-real" contrast/gain.
What about cost? :-) It is an important factor too outside of the fantasy world and can kill new display technologies. The latter often suffer from yield issues (dead pixels, etc.) during early phases of R&D which can make initial costs be still higher as compared to already matured technologies.
>> I.e. actually do wavelength conversion to not just reflect a narrow-pass filtered version of the ambient light, but convert that broad spectrum energy into the desired visuals
Reflecting filtered version of the ambient light, if done efficiently, brings the display to as bright as other natural/common objects around. So it should be good enough for most purposes, even in a somewhat darker ambient with eyes adjusted.
It would not however be attention-grabbing by being brighter than those surrounding objects. So many users, often used to seeing brighter emissive displays, still do not pick those as a preference.
>> I can only imagine this being either:
>> ...
Another way to make it look brighter is to reflect more light towards the users/eyes while capturing it from broader directions. This would compromise on viewing angle (unless more fantasy tech is brought in), but I think this in itself take the display to wow levels.
2 replies →