Japanese Nanoco Group has made great breakthrough on a 1kg batch of green cadmium-free quantum dots for a major Japanese corporation, triggering a US $2 million payment to Nanoco.

The green quantum dots were produced at Nanoco's production facility in Runcorn, Cheshire. It marks major technical achievement by Nanoco because green dots are significantly more challenging than red ones due to their smaller size.

The Japanese corporation plans to incorporate Nanoco's red and green quantum dots including the backlighting of LCD displays and LED-based general lighting into a range of LED applications.

The value of using quantum dot LEDs in LCD TV backlighting is much improved colour performance. For general lighting applications Nanoco's quantum dots allow lighting manufacturers to tune the shade of white light produced giving next generation white LED lights the warm feeling of traditional incandescent lights.

According to Nanoco , it is the only supplier of heavy metal-free quantum dots which show bright emission and can be tuned from ultra-violet, through the visible spectrum, into the near infra-red. The non-toxic CFQD (cadmium-free quantum dots) range is entirely RoHS 2002/95/EC compliant. The firm is currently supplying CFQD samples to its development partners around the world, where emissions range from 400nm to 650nm.