Environmental problems such as climate change, extinction of species, water shortage, plastic pollution, and deforestation are becoming disastrous problems nowadays. Not to mention food scarcity problem is becoming a critical issue due to human population explosion. Therefore, efficient agriculture to harvest more crops is very important for food scarcity problems. 

Quantum Dot on the Glass (left) under room light (right) under UV light in the room

Plants absorb CO2 and make oxygen and starch by the process called photosynthesis with the help of solar light irradiation. In fact, plants are utilizing not all of solar light and they prefer mainly blue and red light in the solar light for their photosynthesis and growth. Plants and plant leaves look green because they reflect green light since they do not use green wavelength color in the solar light.  Recently, it is known that tomato likes magenta color, rose like whitish color and chili pepper prefer yellowish color for their growth. 

Quantum dots are super tiny materials (0.5 - 9 nm) with optical properties that follow the rules of quantum chemistry and quantum mechanics. These quantum dots are also called "artificial molecules" because each quantum dot is composed of only several dozen to thousand number of molecules. At this size range, the energy levels of electrons are no longer continuous and are separated due to the physical phenomenon known as the quantum confinement effect.

Green Science Alliance has been synthesizing various types of quantum dots and quantum dot composite materials for years. This time, based on their quantum dot technologies, Mr. Hirohisa Iwabayashi and Dr. Ryohei Mori have developed quantum dot and quantum dot film which can convert ultraviolet (UV) light, blue light with shorter wavelength, into red light. They have mainly applied CIS (CuInS2) / ZnS quantum dot for red light emitting film. This quantum dot is mainly water base before coating on the film and it is environmentally friendly including manufacturing process. Developed films can be expected to speed up plants and crops growth because this film emit more red light under the sun light.  Since solar light contains some portion of UV light and they are harmful to human, this is an efficient way to utilizer more preferred wavelength light for plant growth, in order to get more agricultural crops efficiently.  

One can expect to place this quantum dot film on window, film sheet for greenhouses, hot houses for plant growth. This can be also placed on LED light for plant factory too. They can also modify emitting light wavelength to not only red light but also other wavelength light for each plants, by selecting and optimizing quantum dot types and synthesizing procedure. 

Green Science Alliance is planning to carry out testing at actual greenhouses, hot houses and agricultural fields. They are also looking for business partners to perform these testing.