Scientists light up blue LED with an AA battery

Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT), in collaboration with other universities in Japan, have developed a novel organic light-emitting diode (LED) that emits blue fluorescence but has a low turn-on voltage.

An RGB LED module can produce any color for the display by using three colors: red, green, and blue. While red and green LEDs work well, the blue LED has been tricky from an energy efficiency perspective.

Conventionally used blue LEDs have a high turn-on voltage of 4V for a luminance of 100 cd per square meter (cd/m2). This might not sound very high, but at the industrial level, it brings about issues since the voltage is beyond what can be supplied by a typical lithium-ion battery.