Just as many in our industry had begun to get to grips with regularly specifying, installing, and even supplying the artwork for technology such digital signage posters (see p49),are things all about to change again? A recent report in Nature highlights the research by a tech guru, who until recently was only well-known within the bounds of the academic elite. Indeed, Harish Bhaskaran’s findings are almost as impressive as his title, being as he is the associate professor of Materials Advanced Nanoscale Engineering Group at Oxford University’s Department of Materials.

Essentially Dr Bhaskaran has been pioneering the development of solid materials being used to replicate what a LCD screen does to produce an image: turning its pixels between flexible and crystal like phases with different optical properties. Known as solid-phase changing materials, you will already be familiar with their use in applications such as ‘solid-state’ hard drives and memory chips. But the clever Oxford professor and his team have been developing solid films that can change colour.

This gives the technology applications previously only achieved by backlit systems such as LCD digital screens. Once commercially developed, these phase changing materials would also be flexible and consume very little power. Imagine being able to clad an entire curved wall in a retail unit with a screen, or being able to integrate a screen into a cut-out promotional graphic that is thinner than the foamboard itself.

The technology relies on an alloy of ‘metalloids’ that are transparent at thicknesses lower than 20 nanometres and powered be electrodes made of indium tin oxide, which is also transparent. Both the thickness of the layers and the phase to which they are transformed by their individual electrodes create the colour of each pixel, and thus, when digitally controlled, create a picture. Who knew? If Dr Bhaskaran gets his technology off the ground then it will certainly open up a new horizon for our own little corner of the world.

''''