Despite the enormous strides made in liquid crystal diode display technology over the past decade, we are close to the point where it has to be admitted that the technology is an unacceptably poor substitute for the cathode ray tube – LCD displays that look good look good only in comparision with earlier LCDs, not with a standard, cheap 14 colour monitor and that we have to look elsewhere for a solution to the problems of portability and low power: this week’s white hope is a family of light-emitting polymers first written up by a team at Cambridge University in 1990, which glow when electricity is passed through them: now, reports the Wall Street Journal, a new company, Uniax Corp of Santa Barbara, California, formed two years ago to exploit conducting polymers, claim some success in developing polymers that give off different colours; since they are liquid, they can be smoothly coated onto curved as well as flat surfaces, and are much easier to work than inorganic semiconductor materials and once the technology is perfected could be used to create screens that were unlimited in their area.
