A breakthrough discovered by researchers at South Korea’s Dongguk University could pave the way for more energy-efficient OLED panels, as well as developing them at a cheaper cost.
Traditionally, rare, costly minerals make up a significant portion of OLED panel production costs. These minerals are necessary for creating the light emitting diodes in OLED manels, and no alternative has proven suitable until now. Dongguk University’s team, headed by Assistant Professor Vijaya Gopalan Sree, has published their findings in Chemical Engineering Journal, showing that they were able to leverage the much more abundant materials manganese bromide and benzyltriphenylphosphonium bromide into an attractive substitute for the rare earth materials traditional OLED development requires.
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According to the team’s findings, the new substitute not only worked, but did so with a low enough turn-on voltage to improve on most OLED panels’ energy efficiency. The team hypothesizes that these findings could lead to cheaper OLED production, as well as a more environmentally-friendly OLED design going forward.
