Cadmium-free

Korean QD producer Hansol Chemical, has conducted an analysis on some of TCL's QLED panels, and concluded that in fact these panels do not contain any quantum dots. Hansol commissioned SGS and Intertek to actually perform the study, on TCL's C755, C655 and C655 Pro models.

Hansol says that TCL's TVs do not contain any indium or cadmium at all, which proves the TVs do not contain quantum dots. TCL responded by saying that the TVs do in fact contain Cadmium, although perhaps at a very trace amount not detected by SGS and Intertek. TCL further says that the method used is not sufficient to detect the exact content of Cadmium.

Japan-based Shoei Chemical announced today that it is acquiring US-based QD developer Nanosys. This is not a complete acquisition, but Shoei acquires "substantially all the assets associated with the Nanosys quantum dot business".  Shoei will continue to operate the Nanosys brand and its Silicon Valley-based R&D facility and labs.

Shoei Chemical has been exclusively producing Nanosys' quantum dots materials for the past four years, and the companies already have a close relationship. Nanosys has shipped QD materials to over 1,000 unique products and a total of over 70 million devices, including monitors, TVs and tablets.

Canon announced that it has developed new perovskite quantum-dot inks for use in next-generation displays, with improved durability and potential for application in high-image-quality displays.

Canon's new perovskite quantum-dot inks are cadmium free, and thanks for Canon's proprietary technologies, the QDs feature protective shell that enables high lifetime and efficiency. Canon's QDs are about 20% more efficient in light converstion compared to standard QDs, and cover 94.4% of the BT.2020 color gamut - higher than regular InP quantum-dot inks (that usually cover around 88% of the same color gamut).

The Coretec Group announced that it has developed an efficient and highly scalable way to produce Silicon Quantum Dots (SiQDs).

The company says that its unique chemistry and processes enable the production of SiQDs that will be suitable for LED applications. Coretec says that SiQDs are metal-free QDs that possess all the favorable properties of their toxic metal-containing counterparts with the added benefits of elemental abundance, biological compatibility, and optical properties.

A new study by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Delaware, Baltimore County, in a collaborative project through the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois, used ultrafast nanometric imaging and found good and bad emitters among populations of carbon dots. This observation suggests that by selecting only super-emitters, carbon nanodots can be purified to replace toxic metal quantum dots in many applications, according to the researchers.

“Coming into this study, we did not know if all carbon dots are only mediocre emitters or if some were perfect and others were bad,” said Illinois chemistry professor Martin Gruebele, who led the study. “We knew that if we could show that there are good ones and bad ones, maybe we could eventually find a way to pick the perfect ones out of the mix.”

Perovskite QD film developer Zhijing Nanotech updated that it recently concluded a successful pilot with TCL to produce 500 75-inch QD-enhanced LCD TVs with Zhijing's PQDF films.

The company reports that the TVs featured a wide color gamut, 147% BT709 - which is higher than most QD TV's on the market, and higher than TCL's original 75M10 TVs. The green Cadmium-free pQD films have excellent optical properties and offer lower cost compared to current QD solutions, according to Zhijing Nanotech.