A new kind of copper OLED could change the TV and home lighting game

Researchers in Switzerland have found a new organic light emitting diode (OLED) material that could scale the technology up to inexpensively light entire rooms and homes for the first time. The results come from a new arrangement of copper electrons, CuPCP, that replaces more costly precious metal diodes (PHOLEDs). The secret to the Swiss team’s new material is a behavior called thermally activated delayed fluorescence, or TADF. Like a supercooled superconductor or a hot nuclear reactor, these TADF OLEDs must get to a certain temperature before they can operate as designed, and they use a supply of outside energy to get to that temperature.