Twisted Light Emission: Enhancing Future Electronics Efficiency

Light bulbs were invented to provide consistent lighting and make it accessible to the general public. Continuous research and experiments to make them more cost-effective led to the development of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

LED technology was invented over half a decade ago by scientist Nick Holonyak Jr. while working at General Electric, which referred to it as “the magic one.”

As LEDs continue to get better over time, they become brighter, more cost-effective, and more reliable, leading to their widespread adoption in traffic lights, replacing incandescent bulbs.

Today, the traditional “yellow” bulbs are restricted to specific applications, while LEDs lead in general lighting applications thanks to their superior energy efficiency, longer lifespan, and versatility.

Of course, innovation never stops. In fact, the invention of LEDs paved the way for OLEDs—organic light-emitting diodes, also known as organic electroluminescent diodes.

This was the result of researchers exploring the possibility of using organic compounds instead of inorganic materials to achieve the same effect as LEDs, which generate light by passing electricity through a semiconductor material. 

The first OLED device was built in 1987 by scientists Steven Van Slyke and Ching Tang at the Eastman Kodak Company.

While both LEDs and OLEDs use electricity to produce light, OLEDs emit light using organic materials. These organic LEDs use carbon-based materials, which allows them to offer thinner displays, better color reproduction, and faster response times than traditional LEDs.

As a result, OLED technology has found its way into smartphones, TVs, and other high-end electronic devices. However, while OLED technology is rapidly developing, it has yet to gain widespread adoption.

A Look at OLED Technology

Now, let’s take a better look at OLEDs. Organic light-emitting diodes, unlike LEDs, are diffuse-area light sources because they are made in sheets. In contrast, LEDs are concentrated, small-point sources of light.

OLEDs’ diffuse light allows them to be used very close to the task surface and doesn’t create glare for the user. This means one can get the desired illuminance with less light, making it highly efficient.

OLEDs’ flexibility, meanwhile, enables them to be made in almost any shape, expanding design possibilities and allowing for a new lighting experience.

When it comes to OLED’s structure, this solid-state device contains a series of thin, carbon-based semiconductor layers between two conductive electrodes, an anode and a cathode. 

The device emits light when adjacent electrodes apply an electric current. For light to escape from the device, at least one of the electrodes needs to be transparent.

By controlling the amount of electric current applied, the intensity of the light emitted can be adjusted. 

As for the light’s color, it is determined by the type of emissive material used. For instance, white light is created by using red, green, and blue emitters that can be arranged in several configurations.

Other types of OLEDs include white, transparent, active-matrix, passive-matrix, foldable, and top-emitting OLEDs.

Today, OLEDs are the dominant smartphone display technology. This is because OLED displays are not only thin and efficient but also transparent, flexible, and foldable while offering the best image quality. Wide viewing angles and a high contrast ratio are other advantages of OLED technology over traditional display technologies.

Click here to learn how OLEDs are revolutionizing night vision cameras.

The Growing Adoption of OLED Tech

The global OLED market has grown significantly over the past many years and will continue to grow in the coming years.

The market is actually projected to grow at a CAGR of 13.20% between 2022 and 2029, reaching a size of $104.4 billion.

The major driver of this growth is the increasing demand in the consumer electronics sector. Additionally, the growing market for wearable devices and the integration of OLED displays in AR and VR devices present new growth opportunities.

Then there’s the emergence of flexible and foldable OLED displays, which is an exciting new trend, promising the convenience of a larger screen in a compact form. These displays enable innovative product designs and applications for unique experiences.

OLED displays are also finding increasing applications in infotainment systems, dashboards, and rear-seat entertainment systems. The rising demand for EVs and the integration of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are expected to contribute to their growth in the automotive sector.

Besides displays, OLED tech also has potential in the lighting industry, offering excellent color rendering, uniform illumination, and the ability to create unique lighting designs. The increasing focus on energy-efficient lighting solutions, combined with the development of larger OLED panels, presents growth opportunities in commercial lighting, architectural lighting, and decorative lighting applications.

Yet another factor driving the OLED market growth is continuous technological advancements, which include more effective materials, encapsulation methods, and manufacturing processes that provide improved performance, cost reduction, and longer lifespan.

However, despite significant performance advances and becoming widely used in smartphone displays, OLEDs still face many challenges. 

Cost is one of the main challenges in the OLED market. The high cost of production is due to the fact that OLED displays require expensive organic materials and complex manufacturing processes, which makes them more expensive than traditional technologies like LCD. 

Another problem that arises during the production process is yield, as just a small defect can result in a significant number of non-functional OLED displays. Also, the reliance on specific organic materials creates a supply chain issue.

Then there’s the matter of limited lifespan with OLED displays in addition to energy efficiency, which is crucial to minimize power consumption and improve battery life in portable devices.

Another limiting factor is the inability to stabilize efficient blue emitters. OLED technology also faces competition from other display technologies, like LCD (liquid crystal display), which still dominates the market, and micro-LED, which, while in the early stages of commercialization, offers potentially longer lifespans. 

In addition, technical limitations, such as the potential for image burn and uniformity across big displays, must also be overcome through improvement in display materials, architectures, and manufacturing processes.

Researchers are actively addressing these limitations, with one particular recent advancement showcasing the huge potential for enhancing the efficiency of OLED displays on televisions and smartphones.

Advancing OLED Efficiency with Chiral Semiconductors

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Eindhoven University of Technology have developed an organic semiconductor that emits circularly polarized light by inducing electrons to move in a spiral pattern. 

This has been achieved by advancing a decades-old challenge in the field of organic semiconductors, which could not only enhance the OLED display’s efficiency but also pave the way for next-generation technologies such as spintronics and quantum computing.

The research published in the Journal Science¹ noted the significant interest in introducing chirality into semiconductor materials in order to achieve strong circularly polarized luminescence (CPL), which is low in existing OLEDs.

The current efficient OLED systems employ light-emitting molecules that are spatially isolated in a host, which produces weak CPL. 

While attempts have been made to achieve high CPL, they haven’t been compatible with optimized OLED device architectures. However, the latest researchers have successfully created an organic semiconductor that induces electrons to move in a spiral pattern.

This has been thanks to a new way to create thin, uniform films with chiral supramolecular nanostructures based on triazatruxene molecules. This method is absolutely suitable for OLED fabrication and exhibits high green CPL. 

“This is a real breakthrough in making a chiral semiconductor. By carefully designing the molecular structure, we’ve coupled the chirality of the structure to the motion of the electrons, and that’s never been done at this level before.”

– Professor Bert Meijer from the Eindhoven University of Technology. 

The chiral semiconductor developed emits circularly polarised light, which means that the light carries information about the ‘handedness’ of electrons. 

The thing is, most inorganic semiconductors’ internal structure is symmetrical, so electrons move in no preferred direction. 

In nature, molecules usually have a chiral, either left- or right-handed structure. Chiral molecules (like DNA) are mirror images of one another, and chirality plays a key role in biological processes. However, it is difficult to harness and control electronics.

So, to create a chiral semiconductor, researchers took inspiration from nature. They nudged stacks of semiconducting molecules to form ordered right-handed or left-handed spiral columns. 

These chiral semiconductors showcase promise in display technology, where current products tend to waste a lot of energy because of the way light is filtered by screens. The newly developed chiral semiconductor me, meanwhile, naturally emits light in a way that can reduce these losses, in turn making screens brighter and more energy-efficient.

According to Professor Sir Richard Friend from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, who co-led the research:

“When I started working with organic semiconductors, many people doubted their potential, but now they dominate display technology. Unlike rigid inorganic semiconductors, molecular materials offer incredible flexibility — allowing us to design entirely new structures, like chiral LEDs. It’s like working with a Lego set with every kind of shape you can imagine, rather than just rectangular bricks.”

The material used as the semiconductor’s foundation is triazatruxene (TAT), which assembles itself into a helical (spiral) stack with a pitch of six molecules. This allows electrons to coil along its structure, helping obtain the observed CPL. 

When exposed to UV light, the self-assembled TAT “emits bright green light with strong circular polarisation.” Co-author Marco Preuss from the Eindhoven University of Technology noted that this effect has been pretty difficult to obtain in semiconductors—that is, until now. 

“The structure of TAT allows electrons to move efficiently while affecting how light is emitted.”

– Preuss

Changing OLED fabrication methods enabled the researchers to successfully use TAT in circularly polarised OLEDs (CP-OLEDs), which demonstrated remarkable brightness, efficiency, and polarisation levels.

The study showed that the OLEDs showed external quantum efficiencies of as much as 16% and electroluminescence dissymmetries less than or equivalent to 10%. According to co-first author Rituparno Chowdhury from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory:

“We’ve essentially reworked the standard recipe for making OLEDs like we have in our smartphones, allowing us to trap a chiral structure within a stable, non-crystallising matrix. This provides a practical way to create circularly polarised LEDs, something that has long eluded the field.”

Besides displays, the latest development also has implications for quantum computing as well as spintronics, where the inherent angular momentum (or spin) of electrons is used to store and process information for faster and more secure computing systems.

As for real-world adoption, this breakthrough could start to see its commercial applications in display technology within the next 3 to 5 years, while applications in spintronics and quantum computing may develop over the next decade.

Innovative Company

Universal Display Corporation (OLED -1.83%)

Universal Display Corporation (UDC) is a leader in the development and commercialization of OLED technologies for use in flat-panel displays, lighting, and organic electronics. It is also a key supplier of organic materials and technologies for OLED displays and lighting. 

Founded about three decades ago, UDC aims to create the next generation of displays. The company’s proprietary tech and materials are being used in commercial OLED products worldwide, including smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, TVs, and more. The most prominent examples are LG’s OLED TVs and Samsung’s Galaxy series. UDC boasts more than 6,000 issued and pending patents worldwide.

The company specializes in the research, development, and commercialization of phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) materials, which offer higher efficiency and improved performance. 

With a market cap of $7.425 billion, USD shares are trading at $156.41 as of this writing, up 6.98% YTD. Its EPS (TTM) is 4.65, and the P/E (TTM) ratio is 33.64, while the dividend yield is 1.15%.

A month ago, Universal Display Corporation announced its financial results, which revealed $162.3 million in revenue in Q4 2024, up from $158.3 million in the same quarter of 2023.

Revenue from material sales increased to $93.3 million during this period due to strengthened demand for the company’s emitter materials. Royalty and license fees contributed $64.4 million to revenue, which decreased due to a reduction in cumulative catch-up adjustments.

In Q4, the company’s cost of material sales was $34.2 million due to higher unit material volume, and the total gross margin was 77%. Operating income was $52.5 million, and net income was $46.0 million or $0.96 per diluted share.

For the full year, the company reported a total revenue of $647.7 million, an increase of 12.36% from the previous year. This included $365.4 million from material sales, which cost $137 million, and $266.8 million from royalty and license fees.

Operating income was $238.8 million, while net income was $222.1 million or $4.65 per diluted share in 2024 compared to $203 million or $4.24 per diluted share in 2023.

UDC also reported $8.9 million in restructuring costs related to the planned closure of its OVJP California location.

Talking about the “record-breaking year of solid financial performance,” Brian Millard, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of UDC, noted the growth and advancements seen across the OLED industry. 

Companies are expanding their product roadmaps, and leading panel makers are investing in new fabs to meet the rising demand, particularly in the emerging IT and automotive markets, stated Millard, adding:

“We believe this new capex cycle will pave the way for meaningful new OLED capacity, new OLED products, and new OLED adoptees.”

For this year, UDC expects its revenue to be between $640 million and $700 million, noting that “the OLED industry remains at a stage where many variables can have a material impact on results.”

The company also announced a cash dividend of $0.45 per share for the first quarter of 2025, payable on March 31, 2025, to all shareholders.

“As a pioneer and leader in the ecosystem, we are well positioned to continue supporting our customers and enabling the industry with our broadening portfolio of energy-efficient, high-performing phosphorescent materials and OLED technologies.”

– CFO Millard

Latest on Universal Display Corporation

Conclusion

The evolution in light-emitting diodes has significantly enhanced display and lighting technology. In this advancement, OLED tech has brought us the benefits of better image quality, thinner and lighter design, flexibility, and innovation. 

While OLED technology has advanced greatly since its early days, it faces challenges in terms of efficiency and cost. As such, recent advances in chiral semiconductors mark a pivotal moment in its development.

The ability to control electron movement and emit circularly polarised light with high efficiency could significantly transform display technology. It would also open doors to new possibilities in quantum computing and spintronics. 

With commercial applications of this innovation on the horizon, this research could redefine how electronics operate and lead to more energy-efficient, high-performance electronic devices in the near future.