After 20 years, LG’s battery-saving “dream" OLED panels are finally ready for phones and tablets
The Korean electronics titan said it took them 20 years to solve… the colour blue. #lg #display #oled
LG 2025 G5 TV. Image: LG.
LG Display, the display panel research and manufacturing arm of the wider LG chaebol, has made a significant technological breakthrough that will soon appear in future phones and tablets.
According to its official statement, LG Display has finally verified the mass-production process of its “dream OLED” panel, also known as a hybrid two-stack Tandem OLED.
This hybrid tandem OLED can use 15% less power while maintaining the same stability (consistent brightness and viewing experience) as current leading OLED types.
In the hands of consumers, this means no drops in OLED quality but less electricity would be used. Phones or tablets with such panels can last longer, even with the same battery (display and display brightness are almost always the biggest battery hogs of phones and tablets).
In its excitement, LG Display has already filed patents for this OLED technology in South Korea and the U.S.
What’s this hybrid two-stack Tandem OLED thing?
LG Display describing how hybrid two-stack Tandem OLED technology works. Image: LG Display.
As explained by LG Display, a “dream OLED” is one that can achieve phosphorescence (the emitting of light without heat) in all three primary colours of a digital display (red, blue, and green).
It’s more effective than fluorescence (emitting light after absorbing radiation): LG said phosphorescence has four times the luminous efficiency of fluorescence but uses one-fourth the power.
The only problem was blue phosphorescence, which has the shortest wavelength and highest energy demands of the three.
To say it was a challenge for display makers is an understatement. Red and green phosphorescence have been commercially available for the last 20 years, but LG Display has only recently figured out how to achieve usable blue phosphorescence in OLED.
To solve this, LG Display used a solution called hybrid two-stack Tandem OLED. This structure puts blue fluorescence in the lower OLED stack and blue phosphorescence in the higher stack. Therefore, it combines fluorescence’s stability with phosphorescence’s energy efficiency to produce the colour blue.
Verification for mass production was done in partnership with Universal Display Corporation, a manufacturer of “raw” OLED and related lighting materials (which it sells to companies like LG Display, which makes the consumer product).
When is it coming?
LG Display said that the current breakthrough can be applied to “small- and medium-sized panels” on electronic devices, specifically calling out phones and tablets as two examples. The technology is slated for a demo at SID Display Week 2025.
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