Methods and apparatus for transparent display using scattering nanoparticles

Patent · Tue May 10 04:00:00 EDT 2016

OSTI ID:1252426

Hsu, Chia Wei; Qiu, Wenjun; Zhen, Bo; Shapira, Ofer; Soljacic, Marin

Transparent displays enable many useful applications, including heads-up displays for cars and aircraft as well as displays on eyeglasses and glass windows. Unfortunately, transparent displays made of organic light-emitting diodes are typically expensive and opaque. Heads-up displays often require fixed light sources and have limited viewing angles. And transparent displays that use frequency conversion are typically energy inefficient. Conversely, the present transparent displays operate by scattering visible light from resonant nanoparticles with narrowband scattering cross sections and small absorption cross sections. More specifically, projecting an image onto a transparent screen doped with nanoparticles that selectively scatter light at the image wavelength(s) yields an image on the screen visible to an observer. Because the nanoparticles scatter light at only certain wavelengths, the screen is practically transparent under ambient light. Exemplary transparent scattering displays can be simple, inexpensive, scalable to large sizes, viewable over wide angular ranges, energy efficient, and transparent simultaneously.

• Research Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: SC0001299
• Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
• Patent Number(s): 9,335,027
• Application Number: 14/067,471
• OSTI ID: 1252426
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY