- A company prepares to make blue phosphor OLED pixels
- Blue PhOLED technology would be a significant efficiency improvement for OLED televisions
- Other companies have been following the same technology.
One of the most sought-after technologies in television (well, for a certain level of TV nerd) may finally be on its way to your living room: blue phosphor OLED, or blue PhOLED for short. This has been talked about for a long time (we reported on progress in 2023), but for several years it has been a promise rather than a product. However, there are good signs that this is going to change.
According to trade site The Elec, another major PhOLED technology is close to mass production. South Korean OLED maker Lordin says it has already secured production facilities for its own version of PhOLED technology, which it calls ZRIET.
That means we could be on the verge of brighter, more energy-efficient, and longer-lasting OLED TVs, because Lordin isn’t alone. Last year LG Display announced that it had reached “commercialization level” for a blue PhOLED panel, and Samsung is also very interested in PhOLED.
The pixels are blue, da ba dee da ba di
PhOLED uses phosphorescent rather than fluorescent light emitters, and those emitters are much more efficient: while fluorescent emitters offer 25% efficiency (meaning that about 25% of the light generated by a pixel actually escapes the pixel so it can reach your eyes), phosphorescents can potentially emit up to 100% using the same amount of energy.
PhOLED has been used for red and green pixels for years, but it has proven to be too difficult to produce a durable material for blue pixels, which is why we have been following developments for a long time.
Finally, achieving blue PhOLED on OLED displays will mean much brighter, more energy-efficient pixels, so you’ll get a better display without increasing heat levels that affect pixel longevity.
Current OLEDs are typically capable of delivering much more brightness than they are calibrated for, but increasing the brightness would make them too hot and significantly shorten their lifespan.
Lordin is not the only company investing in PhOLED. Until now, the main driver of the technology has been Universal Display Corporation, which supplies key components to LG Display and Samsung Display, but Lordin has come up with an alternative structure that it says makes blue PhOLEDs much easier to manufacture and gives TV makers an alternative to UDC technology.
According to Lordin CEO Oh Young-hyun, the company’s technology “structurally improves the efficiency, lifetime and color purity of the blue emitter.”
Of course, it’s not just TVs that will benefit from blue PhOLED: any OLED display could be more efficient and long-lasting. But it’s TVs that have had the most problems with brightness and lifespan, because people replace them more slowly than phones and most other technology.
When will we really see this technology on the televisions we can buy? Probably not this year, but the deadline for upcoming dates is definitely getting shorter. If Lordin’s technology lives up to its promise, perhaps it could even surpass newer technologies like QD-EL, which one company says could arrive as early as 2029.
The best televisions for all budgets
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course, you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and tiktok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
