4 Current Applications for OLED Devices

Organic-light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are thin-film structures fabricated from semiconducting materials with electroluminescent properties. Sequential layers of electron- and hole-blocking materials are sandwiched between a transparent anode and a metallic cathode, which simultaneously acts as a reflective surface and a functional substrate for the OLED device. Electrons are injected into the thin film structure when an external potential is applied across the electrodes. This causes electrons and holes to recombine to form photons, enabling OLED devices to self-emit color-tunable light.

The self-emissive nature of OLED devices facilitates the manufacture of the most efficient and lightweight display architectures currently available on the market. They are extremely versatile and have been implemented in a range of end-use applications.

This blog post will explore four of the current applications of OLED devices in more detail.

Televisions and Monitors

OLED devices for televisions and computer monitors were commercially released in 2013, and in just five years they have cornered the premium display market.

Currently, there is a broad range of OLED devices available on the commercial display markets, from flat and curved panel TVs to so-called OLED wallpaper. Discover more about the outstanding performance of OLED TVs with our previous blog post: Are Quantum Dot TVs Outperforming OLEDs?

Smartphones and Tablets

It took longer for OLED devices to saturate the mobile device market, but since 2016, most leading-edge smartphones and tablets have been constructed using active-matrix OLEDs (AMOLEDs). These use an additional film of semiconducting material behind the primary panel to reach outstanding levels of activation speed; a prerequisite for ultra-high definition (UHD) handheld devices with high pixel counts. Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are still broadly used to fabricate smartphones and tablets, but AMOLED technology is up to 1000x faster than equivalent LCD devices.

Wearables

Wearable OLED devices have made successful inroads since 2017, with the implementation of monochrome OLED light sources into fitness bands and small wrist-mounted displays for smartwatches. More recently, OLED microdisplays have been integrated into virtual reality (VR) headsets owing to their exceptional refresh rates and reduced brightness levels. OLED devices can generate as much as half the nits of an LCD display while still reproducing HDR content onscreen, which is advantageous for reducing eye strain.

Light Panels

Some of the oldest OLED devices include self-emissive light panels with highly-tunable spectral outputs. They have been used to create flexible and homogenous panels, but the market for OLED light panels is still emergent with very few OLED light sources available in commercial spaces.

OLED Materials from Avantama

Avantama is a specialist nanomaterials and electronics manufacturer with extensive experience in the development of solution-processed OLED materials. Our tailor-made formulations can be engineered for specific processing methods with low annealing temperatures to maximize the performance of end-products and reduce the length of development cycles.

If you would like any more information about manufacturing OLED materials with Avantama materials, please do not hesitate to contact us.