In the world of lighting and display tech, light-emitting diodes or LEDs have been leading the market thanks to their energy efficiency, long lifespan, and ability to produce vibrant colors.
A diode, made of semiconductors, allows current to flow in one direction and blocks it in the other. A light-emitting diode (LED), meanwhile, is simply a semiconductor device that produces light when current passes through it.
The rise of LEDs transformed the way we utilize light by emitting light through electroluminescence and revolutionizing display technologies.
Among LEDs, perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs), in particular, have emerged as a promising technology for display and lighting applications due to their low-cost fabrication, high efficiency, and tunable light emission.
Perovskite LEDs have also gained substantial traction thanks to being flexible, having a lightweight design, and offering a wide color gamut. Moreover, PeLEDs can be fabricated using earth-abundant materials and low-energy techniques. These LEDs have achieved high efficiencies across red, green, and blue (RGB) colors.
In recent years, the stability of PeLEDs has also improved markedly, which shows promising potential for their commercialization.
When it comes to making innovative technology available to all at scale, technical, economic, and environmental factors play a critical role, which also helps evaluate their sustainable potential. This information, however, is lacking about PeLEDs.
Numerous studies have evaluated the life-cycle impacts of emerging perovskite solar cells, but their findings can’t be directly extrapolated to PeLEDs. This is because of the fundamental difference in their energy conversion mechanisms.
Unlike LEDs, which convert electricity into light, solar cells convert light into electricity. Then, there’s the fact that PeLEDs operate across multiple wavelengths, which requires diverse functional layer materials and different analyses for devices of varying colors.
So, a comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) encompassing all stages is necessary to identify effective pathways towards PeLEDs’ sustainable commercialization.
A new study has done just this and found that next-generation LEDs are, in fact, cheap and sustainable.
A Life-cycle Assessment of Perovskite LEDs
Published in Nature Sustainability1, researchers at Linköping University examined the emerging PeLED technology from a life-cycle perspective with a focus on commercialization-oriented sustainability.
“Perovskite LEDs are cheaper and easier to manufacture than traditional LEDs, and they can also produce vibrant and intense colors if used in screens. I’d say that this is the next generation of LED technology.”
– Feng Gao, professor of optoelectronics at Linköping University
Gao’s research group worked with Professor Olof Hjelm, Department of Management and Engineering (IEI) and Environmental Technology and Management (MILJÖ), and John Laurence Esguerra, who’s an assistant professor at LiU to get a better idea of how LEDs currently available in the market can be replaced with LEDs based on the perovskite material.
Perovskite materials are a class of materials with unique optoelectronic properties. They have high absorption coefficients, high electron and hole mobilities, and tunable bandgap in addition to being cost-effective.
Now, to assess their commercialization, the research team utilized a detailed life-cycle inventory (LCI) assessment of 18 advanced perovskite LEDs covering RGB, white, and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. The selected devices exhibit high technical performance and are widely recognized.
Based on this data, the researchers analyzed the environmental impact and economic cost of PeLEDs.
Such an analysis needs a clear system definition, which means what is included in it, but that’s not regarding cost and environmental impact.
This framework investigates what happens right from the beginning when the product is created until it can’t be studied. So, a product’s life cycle has five phases — production of raw material, manufacturing, distribution, use, and decommissioning.
Basically, from the cradle to the grave, but “We’d like to avoid the grave,” said Professor Hjelm. Add recycling to it, and as he noted, things get more complicated. Hjelm added:
“But here we show that it’s most important to think about the reuse of organic solvents and how raw materials are produced, especially if they are rare materials.”
One particular aspect where this life cycle analysis provides guidance is the small amount of toxic lead found in PeLEDs. While this is important for the perovskites to be effective, the focus shouldn’t be on just lead, as there are many other materials present in LEDs.
The precious metal gold is one, and it comes with its own challenges. According to Hjelm:
“Gold production is extremely toxic. There are byproducts such as mercury and cyanide. It’s also very energy-consuming.”
The Toxic & Energy Intensive Gold Production Process
Gold (Au) has held the fascination and attention of human societies since ancient times like no other commodity.
This shiny, yellow metal was once universally accepted as payment. At one point, the U.S. monetary system was based on a gold standard. It is also wildly popular as an investment option and used to hedge against inflation.
As a result of this, the value of gold recently hit a new all-time high (ATH) as XAUUSD surpassed $3,000 per ounce. Gold prices are up more than 15% in 2025 and have been experiencing a strong rally since Oct. 2023, when it was around $1,800 per ounce.
Besides functioning as a good store of value, gold is also used in jewelry, medicine, electronics, aerospace, and other industries thanks to its many attractive properties.
This bright yellow metal is soft and requires other metals to gain strength. But it is very malleable, which means its shape can be controlled using force. Besides being hammered into thin sheets, it can also be drawn into wires.
Not only is it known for being highly resistant to corrosion, but it is also an excellent conductor of heat and electricity.
Gold is one of the densest metals, with a density of approximately 19.3 g/cm³. As for its melting point, that’s 1064.18°C, while its boiling point is 2836°C. Furthermore, the metal, which is resistant to most acids and does not react readily with most substances, is non-magnetic.
A combination of these properties makes gold very attractive in smartphones, computers, other consumer electronics, radiation shielding, printed circuits, and semiconductor systems.
Gold is usually found embedded in quartz veins, and it is extracted from the earth through large-scale industrial operations and small-scale mining.
Gold is mined either from the surface or from underground while processing takes place at the mine site. The processing starts with crushing, and then the ore is treated with chemicals to extract the gold, which goes through processes like smelting to make a gold bar. The bar is transported to a refinery to produce pure gold for sale.
The high value of the metal and its superior application make gold mining a sizable and global industry. This widely practiced process is especially popular in some countries in Africa and South America, where it may earn five times as much as fishing, agriculture, and forestry.
Gold mining, however, is not a clean process but rather a toxic and resource-intensive one that poses significant environmental and health risks.
The production of gold incurs CO2 emissions in addition to other environmental risks, including soil contamination, land degradation, water and air pollution, and habitat destruction.
The kind of toxic waste involved here contains as many as three dozen dangerous chemicals, including lead, mercury, cyanide, arsenic, acids, and petroleum byproducts.
The effect of acid mine drainage (AMD), a term referring to the contaminated water resulting from mining companies routinely dumping toxic waste into oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams, is multifarious, making recovery from such wastes extremely difficult.
With gold mining being so harmful to the planet and its people, replacing this precious metal with the likes of aluminum, nickel, or copper in LEDs would provide a great environmental benefit, believes the new study. Meanwhile, a small amount of lead can be maintained so that the LED functions optimally.
Cheap & Sustainable Next-generation LEDs
Perovskites LEDs, as per the study, can be successfully turned into a profitable market offering. It concluded that PeLEDs have great potential for commercialization in the long term. According to the study:
“Future PeLEDs developed through large-scale manufacturing, hold great promise in achieving competitive standing among various lighting technologies from both environmental and economic perspectives.”
The pathway to sustainable commercialization, as per the study, has three critical pillars — environmental, economic, and technical factors. These factors align with the interests of key stakeholders: producers seeking corporate profitability and return on investment, the coordinator, which includes government legislation and policy, and customers who pay for the product.
The study’s life-cycle assessment results show that the environmental impacts of perovskite LEDs arise mainly from the inputs of substances and electricity during production. The distribution stage, i.e., transport, meanwhile contributes less than 5% of the total impacts, and its optimization depends on industrial resources.
Regarding toxicity sources, the study noted that heavy metals from the production of raw materials are the main contributors throughout the life cycle of PeLEDs. The findings further show that using lead (Pb)-free perovskites does not intrinsically reduce environmental impacts.
It is because of the thin emissive layer, which measures only tens of nanometres, that the contribution of Pb in perovskites LEDs to overall environmental impact is minimal.
The study actually pinpointed gold as a strong contributor and mentioned the striking case of gold (Au) cathodes in NIR PeLEDs, which showed environmental impacts over 100 times greater than those of devices that didn’t use gold. This difference was the result of high pollution and energy consumption connected to gold mining. It was compounded by Au’s density, which is seven times that of aluminum (Al).
This emphasizes that technologies free of lead do not always ensure reduced ecotoxicity.
As such, the researchers noted that the general understanding that Pb is the main source of toxicity in perovskite LEDs is not only inadvisable but also risks shifting attention from other critical pollutants.
When it comes to cost, the techno-economic assessment indicates the cost of future PeLEDs to be around US$100 m–2, which is comparable to commercial organic LED panels’ cost.
So, the lower costs and less environmental impact of PeLEDs may even enable them to replace the existing LEDs. But the problem comes in the form of their longevity. This major issue, however, is being tackled by the accelerated development of perovskite LEDs, and with that, their life expectancy is increasing.
The researchers actually proposed a relative impact mitigation time (RIMT) as a novel parameter to quantify the lifetime needed for perovskite LEDs to accomplish sustainability. The study noted:
“RIMT represents the minimal time required to mitigate relative impacts, considering internal and external relative impacts simultaneously.”
According to the study, perovskite LEDs have to attain a practical target of about 10,000 hours in their lifetime for a positive environmental impact. This is achievable, as per the researchers. For now, though, the best PeLEDs today can last for hundreds of hours.
With this assessment, the researchers aim to bring a change in the LED research sphere where, so far, the focus has been on improving the technical performance of LEDs.
“We want what we develop to be used in the real world. But then, we as researchers need to broaden our perspective. If a product has high technical performance but is expensive and isn’t environmentally sustainable, it may not be highly competitive in the market. That mindset will increasingly come to guide our research.”
– Muyi Zhang, PhD student at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at LiU
The study also noted luminous efficacy needs more research to advance the energy efficiency of future PeLED products.
Innovative company
Universal Display Corp (OLED -0.88%)
While Perovskite LEDs are front-running the future of lighting and visual displays, the market is currently dominated by Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) and Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs).
In the OLED space, Universal Display Corp (UDC) is a prominent name that researches, develops, and licenses OLED technologies and materials for displays and lighting.
Founded in 1994, UDC has been leading the innovation in OLED tech with its proprietary UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent OLED technology. It also develops and sells high-performance PHOLED materials and offers various OLED technologies like FOLEDs (Flexible OLEDs), which are used in tablets and foldable smartphones; TOLEDs (Transparent OLEDs), which are used in windows and displays, and WOLEDs (White OLEDs) which are used in lighting applications. The Company also develops and offers OVJP Organic Vapor Jet Printing.
Universal Display Corporation (OLED -0.88%)
With a market cap of $7.1 billion, OLED shares as of this writing are trading at $149.90, up 2.84% YTD. Its EPS (TTM) is 4.66 while the P/E (TTM) ratio is 32.24. The dividend yield is 1.20%.
As for company financials, Universal Display Corporation recently reported its results for Q4 2024. During this period, the company revenue came in at $162.3 million, up from $158.3 from 4Q23. This included $93.3 million in revenue from material sales due to strengthened demand for emitter materials and $64.4 million from royalty and license fees. The cost of material sales, meanwhile, was slightly higher this time at $34.2 million.
Net income was $46 million, which dropped from $62 million recorded last year, and operating income was $52.5 million, which fell from $64.7 million. Net income was $46.0 million or $0.96 per diluted share in Q4. The quarterly dividend meanwhile increased by 12% to $0.45 per share.
For the entire 2024, UDC reported $647.7 million in revenues, an increase of 12% from $576.4 million the year prior. Net profit was $222 million, up 9% from 2023.
“We are pleased to report that 2024 was a record-breaking year of solid financial performance. Across the OLED industry, product roadmaps are expanding, and leading panel makers are investing in new fabs to meet the increasing demand, particularly in the emerging IT and automotive markets. We believe this new capex cycle will pave the way for meaningful new OLED capacity, new OLED products, and new OLED adoptees.”
– CFO Brian Millard
Now, for 2025, the company expects its revenue to be in the range of $640 million to $700 million. So, UDC is forecasting growth of up to 8% or a 1% decline in revenue.
About the time frame for the blue phosphorescence materials (PHOLED) and commercialization, UDC shared that it is closer than ever, calling the commercialization “a significant leap forward in OLED technology.” Confident in its ability to deliver on blue PHOLED, the company said that the commercial introduction would only take months and not years though it does not expect to generate any meaningful revenue from it this year.
This shift from fluorescent to phosphorescent blue marks a great transition that will lead to a massive surge (from a quarter to 100%) in internal luminous efficiency for blue for OLED displays while reducing their power consumption.
As for the OVJP project, the company is planning to close its OVJP center in California, while a new subsidiary called Universal Vapor Jet Corporation has been launched in Singapore to handle OVJP commercialization. UDC believes OVJP to be a cutting-edge technology for large-area display manufacturing.
Latest on Universal Display Corporation
Conclusion
Perovskite LEDs (PeLEDs) are gaining a lot of importance as a next-generation light source due to their potential for high efficiency and a wide range of applications, making them promising for display and lighting applications.
As the latest study shows, their lower cost and environmental impact could allow them to replace the existing LEDs. The environmental impact can be reduced significantly by focusing on gold instead of lead. Replacing Au with more sustainable materials like aluminum or nickel helps address the challenges posed by gold mining, drastically reducing the ecological footprint of PeLED production.
While perovskite LEDs show great potential, their commercialization depends on improving lifespan and luminous efficiency. By addressing longevity challenges alongside low-cost production, sustainable manufacturing, and vibrant color output, PeLEDs can disrupt the LED and display market and achieve widespread adoption.
Studies Referenced:
1. Zhang, M., Ma, X., Esguerra, J. L., et al. (2025). Towards sustainable perovskite light-emitting diodes. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01503-7