For the longest time, liquid crystal displays (LCD) dominated the screen display market. The primary reason? Production costs, lifespan, and energy consumption have all worked well for LCDs.

Until now.

Researchers from the Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, The Australian National University (ANU), and UNSW Canberra have developed a new technology that could herald the "new-generation" of thinner, higher-resolution, and more energy-efficient screens and electronic devices, according to a press release.

"The capability of conventional displays has reached its peak and is unlikely to significantly improve in the future due to multiple limitations. Today there is a quest for fully solid-state flat display technology with a high-resolution and fast refresh rate," Dragomir Neshev, Director of the ARC Centre for Excellence in Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) and Australian National University Professor in Physics, said in a statement.

The team has engineered electrically tunable arrays of nanoparticles called 'metasurfaces' that can perform better and offer multiple benefits over LCDs and LEDs. For instance, the metasurfaces are 100 times thinner than liquid crystal cells, offer a "tenfold" greater resolution, and consume 50 percent less energy.

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