With the company's name and logo taped to the glass door, the unpacked boxes, an empty reception desk, and young scientists bustling about, it could be any Silicon Valley company in the chaos of starting up. But this, it quickly becomes apparent, is not an ordinary startup. You begin to notice the difference a few doors past the coffee maker. Just down the hall, in a windowless room lit by the faint glow of a green laser shooting through a maze of optical equipment, you'll find the company's crown jewels, tiny particles emitting a variety of colors. These are quantum dots-crystals made up of only a few hundred atoms. Viewed through an ordinary optical microscope, they twinkle like stars in a moonless sky.

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