With decades of development resulting in long life and beautiful, high-resolution imaging, the backlit liquid-crystal display (LCD) has the ruling position in the laptop-computer market, and dominates the television market as well. However, the transmission efficiency within an LCD pixel's active area is typically on the order of only 7percent. In contrast, researchers at Tatung University and National Taiwan University (both in Taipei, Taiwan) have built a single-pixel prototype of a different kind of backlit display, one that has a backlight efficiency of 96percent. The display pixel relies on the electrowetting effect, in which a liquid droplet can be moved or reshaped by applying a voltage that alters the liquid's wetting contact angle. While other displays have used the movement of oils or pigmented fluids to alter the colors of pixels, the Taiwanese team uses liquid gallium (Ga), which, being a metal, is opaque and serves as an "on-off" valve for light that does not rely on polarizers or other transmission-reducing components.
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