Canon develops QD-OLED displays without rare metals, using controversial replacement

Modern technologies can also run into geopolitical influences, which could happen to the panels QD-OLED, which only Samsung has in its production program for now. Compared to regular OLED monitors, they have several advantages. The backlight is only one color (usually blue) and the resulting color is then taken care of by quantum dots, which adjust it to red or green. This solution brings the possibility of achieving higher brightness, which is quite a problem with traditional OLED panels, they also suppress the image burn-in problem. The problem, however, is that Samsung’s solution for this uses a very rare metal, indium. There is very little of it in the earth’s crust, and the limited availability is exacerbated by the fact that its most important supplier is China (in the last 20 years, it was slightly under half of global production, but in 2022, China’s share will have risen to 59%). Japanese company Canon but it has found an answer to this problem and its QD-OLED displays do without indium.

In her case, it is a much more easily available and recyclable material, which, however, is also not completely problem-free. It is about lead. This is not exactly the most popular material from an ecological point of view, and it will be interesting to see how such displays cope with e.g. RoHS certification. However, the price should be an advantage. A quantum layer using lead should have a price one hundredth of that of indium. Canon allegedly managed to solve the problem of low lead life, when experience with increasing the life of toners and inks in printers should have been used. When (and if at all) we will meet such displays on the market, it is still difficult to estimate.