Researchers from Science Tokyo developed the world’s lowest operating voltage white OLED device

Researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo (Science Tokyo) led by Associate Professor Seiichiro Izawa have developed a white OLED device that operates at the lowest voltage ever, at under 1.5 V.

The research is built upon previous endeavors in creating low-voltage blue OLEDs using an upconversion process based on triplet–triplet annihilation (TTA). The OLED device emits blue light through the TTA. The researchers doped the device with a sky-blue dopant (perylene-based dopant, Tbpe) and a yellow dopant (rubrene) which together creates white light. The researchers term these OLEDs as up-conversion OLEDs, or UC-OLED.

The OLED device, while operating at very low voltage, suffers from low efficiency and color stability – and the researchers plan to continue and improve the performance of the device.