“Dream OLED” panels verified by LG for the first time, and could boost battery life with better efficiency
Korean manufacturer LG Display announced today that it has successfully verified the “commercialization-level” performance of phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) panels for the first time ever. This announcement comes eight months after LG Display began developing blue phosphorescent light with OLED technology company Universal Display (UDC) last year, and says it is now one step closer to realizing the “Dream OLED,” a panel that uses red, green, and blue phosphorescent light.
What makes phosphorescent layers better than fluorescent layers in OLED TVs is their 100% light efficiency, compared to only about 25% from the latter. They also consume roughly a quarter less power, but are much harder to manufacture due to their complex structure. While red and green phosphorescent light have already been commercialized for over 20 years, blue phosphorescent light has been delayed until now due to its short wavelength and high energy.
“Dream OLED” TV isn’t happening anytime soon, but it could help handhelds
To overcome the manufacturing challenges, LG introduced a hybrid-to-stack tandem structure that addresses the issue by combining the stability of fluorescence with the lower power consumption of phosphorescence. This approach allows both stability and power efficiency to be maintained by stacking blue fluorescence on the lower layer and blue phosphorescence on the upper layer.
LG states that this method “consumes about 15% less power while maintaining a similar level of stability to existing OLED panels.” For all-in-one devices using one of these new OLED panels, this could help battery life last longer than ever before.
“The successful verification of the commercialization of blue phosphorescent products, which is the final puzzle piece for the dream OLED, will be an innovative milestone toward next-generation OLED”
Yoon Soo-young, CTO of LG Display [translated]
LG plans to demonstrate its blue phosphorescent OLED panel technology at SID Display Week, which begins on May 11, 2025, in San Jose, California. However, the company will showcase the technology in “small and medium-sized panels that can be applied to IT devices such as smartphones and tablets.”
With the popularity of OLED panels in devices such as handhelds, we hope this will be another area where the new technology can be utilized. Both Valve and Nintendo have released OLED versions of the Steam Deck and Switch, respectively; the Zotac Zone is another OLED device on the handheld market. On top of that, ASUS hasn’t ruled out using OLED in a future ROG Ally.
This means it is not yet ready for larger displays like OLED TVs. Still, LG mentions that it is targeting the latest device markets that demand both high efficiency and high quality, such as AI PCs and AR and VR devices, suggesting that rumors about a brighter future for Apple’s Vision Pro could become true.
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