The ‘dream OLED’ TV tech upgrade may finally be on the way — CEO says it will improve ‘efficiency, lifespan and color purity’, and it’s readying production
- Company prepares to make blue phosphor OLED pixels
- Blue PhOLED technology would be a major improvement in the efficiency of OLED TVs
- Other companies have pursued the same technology
One of the most sought-after technologies in television (well, for a certain level of TV nerd) might finally be on its way to your living room: blue phosphor OLED, or blue PhOLED for short. We’ve been talking about it for a long time – we reported on progress in 2023 – but for several years, it’s more of a promise than a product. The signs, however, are that this will change.
Another major piece of PhOLED technology is close to mass production, according to trade site The Elec. South Korean OLED maker Lordin says it has already secured production facilities for its own PhOLED technology, which it calls ZRIET.
This means we could be on the cusp of offering brighter, more energy-efficient and longer-lasting OLED TVs, because Lordin is not alone. Last year, LG Display announced that it had reached the “commercialization level” of a blue PhOLED panel, and Samsung is also very interested in PhOLED.
The pixels are blue, da ba dee da ba di
PhOLED uses phosphorescent rather than fluorescent light emitters, and these emitters are much more efficient: where fluorescent emitters offer 25% efficiency (meaning that about 25% of the light generated by a pixel actually escapes the pixel to reach your eyes), phosphorescent emitters can potentially deliver up to 100% using the same amount of power.
PhOLED has been used for red and green pixels for years, but it proved too difficult to produce a durable material for blue pixels, so we have been following the latest developments for a long time.
Finally, getting a blue PhOLED in OLED displays will mean much brighter and more energy efficient pixels – so you’ll get a better display without increasing the heat levels that affect pixel longevity.
Today’s OLEDs are often capable of providing much more brightness than they are rated for, but increasing the brightness would cause them to heat up too much and significantly shorten their lifespan.
Lordin is not the only company investing in PhOLED. So far, the main driver of the technology has been Universal Display Corporation, which supplies key components for LG Display and Samsung Display, but Lordin has developed an alternative structure that he says makes blue PhOLEDs much easier to manufacture and gives TV makers an alternative to UDC technology.
According to Lordin CEO Oh Young-hyun, the company’s technology “structurally improves the efficiency, lifespan and color purity of the blue emitter.”
Of course, it’s not just TVs that benefit from blue PhOLED: any OLED screen could be more efficient and more durable. But TVs have suffered the most in terms of brightness and lifespan, as people replace them more slowly than phones and most other technology.
When will we actually see this technology in TVs we can buy? Probably not this year, but the upcoming schedule will definitely get shorter and shorter. If Lordin’s technology lives up to its promise, it could perhaps even beat newer technologies such as QD-EL, which one company says could arrive as early as 2029.
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