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S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y
R E S E A R C H @ H K U S
OLED utilizes a stack
of thin organic films
to transport charges
(electrons and holes)
and produce light
via electron-hole
recombination.
Light emission
Transparent electrode
Metal electrode
Electron transport layer
Emitting layer
Hole transport layer
PROF CHING W TANG
IAS Bank of East Asia Professor,
Chair Professor of Electronic and Computer
Engineering, Chemistry and Physics
The ‘blue’ problem is perhaps
the last frontier to be tackled
in OLED material research;
solutions will make quantum
jump improvements in
performance and cost
Organic LED (OLED) is another import-
ant display research area at HKUST –
led by IAS Bank of East Asia Professor
Ching W Tang, the first Chinese Wolf
Prize Laureate in Chemistry, regarded
internationally as the founding father
of OLEDs. The OLED revolution sparked
by Prof Tang’s discovery of the organic
hetero-junction in the early 1980s led to
a new display technology and a rapidly
growing industry. OLED displays are
more energy-efficient, thinner and lighter
than conventional liquid-crystal displays
(LCD). Because of these superior fea-
tures, OLED displays are being used in
today’s smartphones, tablets, watches,
laptops, and large-screen TVs. The next-
generation televisions based on OLED
will not only have superior picture quality
but can be made flexible and so thin that
they can be literally stuck to the wall.
Prof Tang is now embarking on the
OLED’s “blue” problem – the instability
of blue OLED emitters – and to further
improve the lifespan of blue emitters
through new material designs and fine-
tuning the layer architecture in the
device. In addition, Prof Tang’s team will
also undertake research to come up with
unconventional methods for patterning full
color high-resolution display panels, with
an aimof lowering themanufacturing cost.
With their highly successful and
proven multidisciplinary “entire system”
approach, HKUST researchers are well-
positioned to embrace the future chal-
lenges at the frontier of emerging display
technologies.
