Nanosys

Nanosys Inc.

Company logo
Type	Private
Industry	Nanotechnology Advanced Materials Consumer electronics Displays Quantum dots
Founded	2001 (2001)
Founder	Larry Bock
Headquarters	Nanosys 233 S. Hillview Dr Milpitas, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jason Hartlove (President and CEO)
Products	Products list QDEF (Quantum Dot Enhancement Film) QuantumRail
Number of employees	120
Website	www.nanosysinc.com

Nanosys is a nanotechnology company located in Milpitas, California, founded in 2001. Nanosys designs products for LCD displays based on quantum dots.

Products

Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF)

Nanosys Quantum Dot Enhancement Film, or QDEF, is an optical film component for LED driven LCD displays. Each sheet of QDEF contains trillions of tiny Quantum Dot Phosphors. QDEF enables LCD displays to be brighter and more colorful by providing a high quality, tri-color white light from a standard blue LED light source. Larger than a water molecule, but smaller than a virus, these tiny phosphors convert blue light from a standard Gallium Nitride (GaN) LED into different wavelengths based upon their size. Larger dots emit longer wavelengths (red), while smaller dots emit shorter wavelengths (green). Blending together a mix of dot colors allows Nanosys to precisely engineer a new spectrum of light to customer specifications.

The Quantum Dots are tuned to create better color by changing their size during fabrication to emit light at just the right wavelengths. Traditional light emitting materials such as crystal phosphors have a broad fixed spectrum. Quantum dots can convert light to nearly any color in the visible spectrum, giving display designers the ability to tune and match the spectrum more accurately to color filters while improving energy efficiency. Designed to replace the functionality of a diffuser sheet while actively converting color, QDEF can be added to an LCD's film stack with little change in overall thickness or manufacturing process (Fig 1).

QDEF was announced on May 17, 2011 at the Society for Information Display (SID) Display Week tradeshow. It has been adopted in products such as the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7 (2013) and the ASUS Zenbook NX-500 (2014).

At the Consumer Electronics Show 2015 it became known that Nanosys has licensed Samsung Electronics as well as 3M to manufacture QDEF products. QDEFs from 3M are used by Chinese LED-backlit LCD TV manufacturers Hisense (ULED TV) and Changhong (QLED TV) TV sets.

File:QDEF Exploded Diagram.png

Fig 1: Exploded diagram showing QDEF integration into a standard LCD display

QuantumRail

Announced just after CES in January 2010 as part of a commercial agreement with Korean consumer electronics manufacturer and LG subsidiary LG Innotek The quantum rail is a glass capillary optical component containing red and green quantum dots that is inserted between the LEDs and the lightguide panel (LGP) of an LED LCD display in manufacturing to improve color gamut.

File:Quantum Rail Diagram.png

Fig 2: QuantumRail LED LCD implementation diagram

Awards

• Society for Information Display Best in Show Award 2014: Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF) High Dynamic Range, wide color gamut demo with Dolby
• Society for Information Display Best in Show 2014: Small booth category

• Society for Information Display Gold Component of the Year Award 2012: Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF)
• Society for Information Display Best in Show 2011: Small booth category

• Silicon Valley Business Journal Emerging Technology Awards: Winner, life sciences

• Wall Street Journal 2010 Technology Innovation Awards: Runner up, semiconductors

Founders, funding, and patents

Nanosys was founded by Larry Bock, Charles Lieber and Paul Alivisatos. They were subsequently joined by Steve Empedocles, Wally Parce and Calvin Chow.

Major funders of the company include Venrock Associates, Samsung, Arch Venture Partners, Intel, El Dorado Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners, Prospect Ventures, Harris & Harris Group, Lux Capital, Kodak, and Wasatch Advisors.

Nanosys has developed a significant quantum dot patent portfolio with over 200 issued and pending patents worldwide. These patents cover the fundamentals of quantum dot construction as well as component and manufacturing designs. This portfolio is the result of collaborations between Nanosys and universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Hebrew University, as well as industry collaborations with companies including Philips-Lumileds and Life Technologies.

External links

• Video: Robert Scoble discusses Nanosys display technology with CEO Jason Hartlove

• Tekla Perry: CES 2015 - Placing the Bets on the New TV Technologies. IEEE Spectrum, January 7, 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2015
• Nanosys QDEF Wins Display Component of the Year at SID | Nanosys. Nanosysinc.com. Retrieved on 2014-06-10.
• Nanosys QDEF Wins Display Component of the Year at SID | Nanosys. Nanosysinc.com. Retrieved on 2013-09-05.