A senior executive from the quantum dot technology manufacturer Nanosys says that the company is targeting a 2029 launch date for its next-generation QDEL displays, which promise to make TVs brighter and slimmer with more accurate colour reproduction.
The revelation came as the company outlined a number of advancements it’s working on in an interview with Insight Media this week, including an enhanced form of quantum dots that will deliver wider colour reproduction. The technology in question will first appear in TCL’s 2026 flagship TV, the TCL X11L, where they’re being marketed as “Super Quantum Dots” or SQD.
“We’re showing BT.2020 quantum dots,” said Nanosys Head of Marketing Jeff Yurek. “They are red, green and blue quantum dots, and you’ll have seen this at TCL’s booth. This is what they call SQD.”
Yurek revealed that the super quantum dots will also appear in some additional TCL TV models this year, and we can expect that they’ll also come to other TV brands in the future, as Nanosys strives to counter the rise of RGB LED televisions.
The second part of Yurek's interview discussed a technology that Nanosys refers to enhanced quantum dot converters, which are going to be paired with Samsung Display’s QD-OLED displays to increase their brightness. This technology, which Nanosys refers to as a “new version of Quantum Dot Colour Conversion,” is set to debut later this year.
According to Yurek, the company has collaborated with one of its ink suppliers to enhance the brightness and performance of its QDCC materials. “So you are seeing some new QD-OLED TVs this year with much higher brightness,” he promised.
Yurek did not mention any specific models, but we know that Samsung is planning to launch new models called the S95H and S99H later this year that will feature more advanced QD-OLED panels, and they may yet find their way to other models and possibly even other brands, if Sony decides to launch a new QD-OLED TV this year.
Perhaps the most exciting revelation is about what’s to come before the end of this decade. Nanosys’ QDEL technology is known by lots of different names, including NanoLED, electroluminescent quantum dot, emissive quantum dot, ELQD, QD-LED, EL-QLED and AMQLED.
The technology has long been hailed as “true QLED” because of the way the quantum dots become self-emissive. It uses electroluminescent quantum dots that conduct electricity and create their own light, without the need for separate light emitting diodes behind them. In other words, the quantum dots act as light-emitting diodes, eliminating the need for LEDs or OLEDs. That’s very different from the quantum dots we’re familiar with, which are really just colour filters and rely on LCD backlights. The term “QLED” was never used by Nanosys, but was stolen by various TV brands to market the displays that use this technology.
QDEL is therefore considered to be a genuine evolution in display technology, and Yurek sounded extremely enthusiastic about its potential. According to him, it’ll result in much higher brightness, superior contrast and more accurate colour reproduction while simultaneously reducing energy consumption. The technology also allows for even thinner display panels because it uses few layers, and that may also result in televisions becoming cheaper when the technology matures, Yurek said.
So far, we've only seen a very few small prototypes of this technology in the wild, such as Sharp's rather miniscule 12-inch QDEL TV) that was exhibited at CES 2024, but the promise of a uniquely affordable OLED-beating tech has gotten much of the TV industry giddy with excitement.
According to Yurek, there’s still lots of work to be done on QDEL in order for the company to be able to commercialise the technology, but he’s hopeful that it will be ready before the end of the decade. “We think 2029 is a reasonable target for when we’ll start seeing those in the market,” he said. “That is QD electroluminescent displays.”
