An overview of organic light-emitting diodes: from past generations to modern light emission principles

Abstract

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have entered our everyday life as we can nowadays find them in smartphone and television screens. Their widespread use can be attributed to their ability to outperform technologies based on classical semiconductors, whereas this is not possible or not yet achieved in other fields of organic optoelectronics such as solar cells. Current OLED efficiencies, i.e. the light output versus the power input, match or even surpass those of inorganic LEDs. Furthermore, the ability for ultra-thin processing and direct color emission, instead of having to rely on liquid crystals, makes them very successful in display technologies. Herein, a brief historic overview of the development of OLEDs is given with a focus on the organic emitters designed for the different OLED ‘generations’. At the end, a short summary of our contributions to the field – joint computational/synthetic efforts on donor-acceptor chromophores displaying thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) – is provided as well.