Thin, fast, and flexible

Amorphous silicon has long been the king of flat panel displays. It began its reign in PC monitors and high-definition TV, then conquered netbooks, e-readers, and smartphones. No other substance was as suitable for the thin-film transistors that sit behind a display's hundreds of thousands of pixels, turning each one on or off. But soon the dominion of amorphous silicon will pass, because it can't provide what coming generations of electronic products will require. For one thing, it isn't fast enough. Next-generation LCD TVs will be refreshed at least 240 times a second, which is two to four times as quick as today's versions; that way, they'll provide sharper fast-action sports and movies. Three-dimensional displays will need refresh rates twice again as high, to provide all that fast-motion goodness to each eye.