A color wheel (CW) is one of the most essential devices for
contemporary projection displays because it provides the color
initialization definition and determines the color performance of the
whole system. However, conventional color wheels remain limited in
terms of color performance and efficiency because of the
light-absorbing material and time sequential color generation. Quantum
dots, found in 1981 and known as a kind of quasi-zero-dimensional
nanomaterial, exhibit excellent features for displays due to their
quantum confinement effect, which won the 2023 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry. Inspired by this, the paper systematically demonstrates a
quantum-dot color wheel (QD-CW) device through theoretical derivation,
simulation analysis, and experimental verification. The theoretical
model to define the duty circle ratio is presented for the QD-CW and
verified by Monte Carlo ray-tracing simulation. In terms of
experimental verification, the QD-CW device is realized by multiple
rounds of a photolithography process, and then assembled into a blue
laser pumped projection prototype for full-color display. The
chromaticity coordinates of white-balanced output are finally located
at (0.317,0.338), which matches well with a standard D65 source. The
color gamut area of the QD-CW device reaches 116.6% NTSC, and the
average light conversion efficiency (LCE) of the prepared QD-CW is
57.0%. The proposed QD-CW device has ∼40% higher color gamut area and 1.2× higher LCE than a conventional CW
device. These exciting findings show a groundbreaking approach to
color generation in projection displays, which are expected to shed
light on other high-quality display applications.