A research group led by Professors Jens Pflaum and Bert Hecht was responsible for the work; the group has now published the results of their work in Science Advances.
A display on a square millimeter "With the help of a metallic contact that allows current injection into an organic light-emitting diode while simultaneously amplifying and emitting the generated light, we have created a pixel for orange light on an area measuring just 300 by 300 nanometers. This pixel is just as bright as a conventional OLED pixel with normal dimensions of 5 by 5 micrometers," says Hecht, describing the key finding of the study.
To put this into perspective, a nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter. This means that a display or projector with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels could easily fit onto an area of just one square millimeter. This, for example, enables integration of the display into the arms of a pair of glasses from where the light generated would be projected onto the lenses.
An OLED consists of several ultra-thin organic layers embedded between two electrodes. When current flows through this stack, electrons and holes recombine and electrically excite the organic molecules in the active layer, which then release this energy in the form of light quanta.
Since each pixel glows on its own, no backlighting is necessary, which enables particularly deep blacks, vivid colors, and efficient energy management for portable devices in the field of augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR). |
