Display paper briefing, week 4 of August
Fifteen display-related papers, picked out of 776 screened across 12 major journals. The remaining two are covered as separate in-depth articles.
From Monday 24 to Sunday 30 August 2026, 776 papers published online in 12 major journals were checked in full and narrowed to 21 with a display connection. Two of those, on stretchable OLED and on optically clear adhesive for foldables, are covered as separate in-depth articles; 15 are introduced briefly here. The rest were excluded as having only a faint connection to display.
This was a week when efficiency records piled up. 37.7% in green phosphorescence-sensitized fluorescence, 36.9% in blue hyperfluorescence, 30.87% in quantum dots and 38.68% in red top emission were each reported. What all four have in common is that the value came not from the emitter but from working on what surrounds it.
1. Green MR-TADF at 37.7% EQE, BT.2020 gamut in top emission
Advanced Functional Materials · 08.26 · Eo Jin Jeon, Organic Optoelectronic Device Laboratory, Department of Information Display, Kyung Hee University
The multi-resonance TADF molecule used as the terminal emitter in a phosphorescence-sensitized fluorescence (PSF) structure was redesigned. Attaching a naphthobenzofuran tetracyclic structure around the boron-nitrogen emitting unit raised the planarity, which suppressed structural fluctuation in the excited state and gave a full width at half maximum under 23 nm and a photoluminescence quantum yield near 100%.
The key is the molar absorption coefficient. π extension with aromatic rings pushes emission to longer wavelength while raising absorption strength, and that governs how well excitons crossing from the sensitizer are caught by the terminal emitter. A bottom-emitting device gave a maximum external quantum efficiency of 37.7% (Ph-NapBF), holding 33.3% at 1,000 nits, and a top-emitting device met the BT.2020 green reference at CIE coordinates (0.17, 0.79) with a current efficiency of 277.2 cd/A. Values obtained in the structure and gamut real panels use, so a domestic materials maker can read them directly.
2. Laying the molecule flat to get blue OLED dipoles 98% horizontal
Advanced Materials · 08.26 · Chengcheng Wu, Institute of Materials Research, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School
Bulky tert-butylcarbazole was attached to an iridium complex to press the molecule sterically into a flatter, more anisotropic shape. The exciton binding energy rises, making it resistant to thermal dissociation, and the radiative lifetime shortens so excitons are consumed faster.
Obtained at the same time was a horizontal emitting dipole ratio of about 95%. The more the emitting dipoles lie parallel to the substrate, the better light escapes the panel, so extraction rises accordingly. More interesting is that this molecule does not stop at being the emitter but acts like an electrostatic template, pulling the orientation of the terminal MR-TADF emitter v-DABNA along with it. Dipole orientation reached 98% as a result. The final blue hyperfluorescent OLED recorded a full width at half maximum of 22 nm at 470 nm, a maximum EQE of 36.9%, and an LT50 lifetime of 446 hours at 1,000 nits.
3. A quantum dot device at 30.87% EQE from locking vibrations with deuterium
Laser & Photonics Reviews · 08.24 · Mengxin Liu, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University
PEDOT:PSS, commonly used as the hole injection layer in quantum dot devices, is acidic and takes up moisture readily. The authors replaced it with a self-assembled monolayer and substituted deuterium for the hydrogen in the molecular backbone.
The intent is twofold: to raise the dipole moment and deepen the ITO work function, and to suppress C-H stretching vibrations so the molecules stack more regularly. With energetic disorder and non-radiative recombination at the interface both falling, EQE rose to 30.87% (against 24.03% for the PEDOT:PSS control). What stands out is the roll-off: EQE stayed above 20% even at 250,000 nits, and the positive aging common in quantum dot devices was not observed.
4. A palladium complex for 38.68% EQE in red top emission
Advanced Materials · 08.28 · Li Jiang, Key Laboratory of Novel Display and Storage Materials, Shenzhen University
Red TADF was realized with a palladium(II) complex rather than iridium or platinum. Varying the torsion angle of a carbazole ligand bearing dibenzophenazine tuned the singlet-triplet energy gap from 0.05 to 0.26 eV, and it was shown that this value governs the emission mechanism and the radiative decay rate.
The optimal compound has a photoluminescence quantum yield of 82% with a lifetime of 1.13 µs, and in a bottom-emitting device gave red at 617 nm with a maximum EQE of 30.15% and roll-off at 1,000 nits of only 2.32%. In a top-emitting device without ITO it gave a maximum EQE of 38.68% in pure red with CIE x above 0.68. Used as a sensitizer for a red MR emitter, the same compound gave an EQE of 27.06%.
5. A full survey of template patterning for ultrahigh-resolution quantum dot devices
Laser & Photonics Reviews · 08.27 · Wei Cao, School of Physical Science and Technology, Tiangong University · review
In making ultrahigh-resolution QLEDs for VR and AR, the quality of the emissive layer pattern directly decides efficiency, colour purity and luminance uniformity. A review that revisits pixel process strategies such as transfer printing, self-assembly and template-assisted patterning, starting again from device structure and operating mechanism. A good starting point for surveying microdisplay processes.
6. A solvent-free lift-off taking 5 µm pixels to 4 inches
Small · 08.27 · Yu Zhou, College of Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering, Hunan University
Wet lift-off, which dissolves away the resist, uses hazardous solvents, and the solvent penetrates and swells, ruining sensitive functional materials. The authors tuned interfacial adhesion to create a dry lift-off that peels physically, without solvent.
Applied to both perovskite quantum dots and PEDOT:PSS, it gave patterns at 5 µm resolution on a 4-inch wafer scale, with lift-off yield approaching 100%. For PEDOT:PSS an undercut structure was added, raising structural stability while keeping conductivity.
7. An ultra-narrowband blue perovskite LED held by molecular bridges
Laser & Photonics Reviews · 08.27 · Longqi Lin, College of Physics and Energy, Fujian Normal University
Getting blue from wide-bandgap quasi-two-dimensional perovskite runs into buried interfacial disorder, low hole injection and a broad phase distribution. A donor-acceptor molecule terminated with benzoic acid was placed in the hole transport layer to address all of these at once. The fluorinated molecule strengthens hydrogen bonding with the organic spacer cation, suppressing low-n phases and funnelling energy into the main emitting phase. It gave an EQE of 9.3% at 478 nm.
8. A blue-light-detecting perovskite photodiode fixed by an anisole antisolvent
Small · 08.26 · Kyu Young Kim, Department of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials Engineering, Sejong University
Anisole was used as an internal antisolvent, with a brief dipping post-treatment added, to obtain a pinhole-free large-grain film. In the self-powered state with no applied bias it recorded a dark current density of 4.89 nA/cm², an EQE of 78.11% at 380 nm and a detectivity of 6.77×1012 Jones. After 1,000 hours of storage without encapsulation it retained more than 97% of its initial EQE. A result on the 350 to 490 nm band photosensor side.
9. A polarization moiré made by twisting two liquid crystal layers
Advanced Materials · 08.27 · Jordan A. Wilson, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland
Nanorods were aligned under a magnetic field to make liquid crystal films, and two of them were stacked with a twist. Depending on the stacking angle a moiré superlattice arises in polarization space, tracing different paths on the Poincaré sphere with angle. Stokes parameters were mapped pixel by pixel. It targets applications in polarization filtering and polarization-encrypted anti-counterfeiting.
10. Three-dimensional vectorial holography with an on-chip metasurface
Laser & Photonics Reviews · 08.25 · Shu Zong, National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University
A metasurface placed on a single chip realizes a three-dimensional hologram with full polarization control, designed end to end. It touches on the direction of using polarization degrees of freedom in near-eye displays.
11. Room-temperature phosphorescent organic crystals that switch on under pressure
Nature Communications · 08.26 · Yunxia Shen, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang Normal University, and others
Organic crystals giving room-temperature phosphorescence are usually brittle, but crystals were made that bend mechanically while keeping their phosphorescence. What is interesting is the behaviour where applying pressure switches the emission on. It offers a lead toward devices that turn force into light.
12. Two-dimensional excitons waking triplet pairs at a distance
Nature Communications · 08.27 · Qiushi Ma, Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, and others
It was shown that emission from triplet pairs generated by singlet fission can be sensitized at long range by excitons in a two-dimensional material. This belongs to the family of work making two excitons from one photon, where how to hand the energy across has long been the bottleneck.
13. Giant multiphoton nonlinearities in layered perovskites
Light: Science & Applications · 08.25 · Yanming Xu, Fujian Key Laboratory of Quantum Information and Quantum Optics · joint with Nanjing University
An observation that excitons and multiphoton processes couple in hybrid layered perovskites to give unusually large nonlinearity. It is a result on the optical modulation and nonlinear optics side rather than emission, but useful for understanding the excitation dynamics of perovskite emitters.
14. Ultralong organic phosphorescence confined in a flexible photonic crystal
Laser & Photonics Reviews · 08.25 · Huimin Xing, State Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics, Nanjing Tech University
A photonic crystal structure was built on a flexible substrate with an ultralong organic phosphorescent material inside, making an anti-counterfeiting device whose colour and afterglow change with viewing angle.
15. Pure blue room-temperature phosphorescence of 2.45 seconds by supramolecular coordination
Advanced Science · 08.24 · Jun Wang, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Guizhou Normal University
Pure blue room-temperature phosphorescence is especially difficult because the triplet energy is high. A supramolecular coordination structure stabilized the triplet to give a lifetime of 2.45 seconds. It is not a result usable directly as a display emitter, but it is worth noting as a design that holds a triplet for a long time.