SNU research team develops ‘world’s most advanced’ perovskite light-emitting diode

A local research team developed “the world’s most advanced” perovskite light-emitting diode (LED), the next-generation display after the organic light-emitting diode (OLED).

The research was published in Nature journal, Wednesday.

A Seoul National University (SNU) research team led by Lee Tae-woo, professor of material science and engineering, developed a perovskite LED with enhanced efficiency, lifespan and luminance.

The breakthrough research brought Korea a step closer to marketing the technology in the future, said Lee.

“The research shows that perovskite LEDs are not limited to simple laboratory-level materials and can be marketed in the future,” said Lee in a release, “and it is expected to contribute to greatly speed up the commercialization of high-color-purity displays that can lead the future of Korea’s display industry.”

Perovskite is considered the key material for next-generation display technologies, which include virtual reality headsets and ultra-high-definition television.

Perovskite LED has high color purity and electrical properties, with lower material costs to about one-tenth to that of OLED. It is able to cover a color gamut — the range of colors that a display is able to produce — 40 percent wider than the previous color standard.

However, perovskite emitters have lower efficiency and short lifespan, which have been the major obstacles in developing commercial perovskite LEDs.

In 2015, Lee enhanced the efficiency of perovskite LEDs from 0.1 percent to 8.53 percent and published the result in Science. His latest research pushed the efficiency toward 28.9 percent, near the theoretically maximum level, by synthesizing highly emissive perovskite nanoparticles.

Moreover, Lee’s research team extended the perovskite LED lifespan from the previous several hundred hours to over 30,000 hours. Both the lifespan and efficiency rate marked record figures for perovskite LEDs.

The perovskite LED developed by the SNU research team also has ultra-high luminance, higher than that of OLED displays.

Lee and his research team patented over 30 technologies related to the perovskite emitter, synthesis process, and LEDs since 2014, and established a start-up named S&D Display for commercial application of the technologies.

Lee estimated that it will take over five years for the perovskite LED to begin replacing OLEDs in the market.

Led by the SNU team, the research was jointly conducted with the University of Cambridge and Peroled, a local company specializing in perovskite display technology.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]