A new material developed by Canon has indicated there is no use for rare metals when creating OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panels.

This comes as Canon are doing what they can to reduce dependence of major rare metal producers. They plan to commercialise this technology in a few years.

The new material is called quantum dots (QD), which are tiny, semiconductor particles with a diameter of 1 nanometer. When these particles are irradiated with light or injected with an electric current, they emit vivid colours.

Quantum dots are already being used for high-end OLED TVs, for example, Samsung mass-produces quantum dots, but uses the compound indium phosphide.

Indium is a rare metal that is only produced in extremely small quantities.

This new material from Canon uses lead, easily procured from raw materials in “urban mines.” There are plans this will be commercialised by the mid-2020s.

A German research firm found China accounted for 59%, or 530 tons of the indium production in 2022.

Canon has chosen to use lead instead of indium, which leads to results less durable than indium, however after leveraging experience from materials such as toner and ink, Canon were able to create a compound as durable as indium.

Lead is also easily reusable, with around 70% produced from recycled sources such as car batteries. It also costs a lot less than rare metals. It has been reported that the material cost of Canon’s quantum dots could be as low as one-hundredth of Samsung’s.

Conventional OLED TVs use colour filters to express the primary colour red, blue and green. OLED TVs with quantum dots in ink form printed on glass produce red and green colours bright even when exposed to light.

Power consumption is also reduced to around 1/3rd of conventional screens.

Other than Samsung, other companies such as Sony, TCL and Sharp are using quantum dots to create OLED TVs. If the new, cheaper material spreads as expected, there are expectations of lower prices on high-end model OLED TVs.

A British research firm has reported the number of TVs equipped with quantum dots is expected to increase over 8x from 2018 to 22 million units in 2025, which accounts for around 8% of the total TV market.