The worldwide usage of artificial lighting is almost $91 Billion market, corresponding to 20% of total worldwide energy output. According to estimates, this energy use has a huge negative influence on the environment resulting in 7% of worldwide CO2 emissions. Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) have made a remarkable breakthrough in research and industries, with rapidly gaining market share across smart electronics and in automotive displays and lighting. Drawbacks of inorganic LEDs is their significantly reduced potential for limited color range, less tunable properties, low efficiency and manufacturing difficulties. Contrarily, organic OLEDs offer advantages such as high flexibility, lightweight construction, low production costs, wide viewing angles, excellent color reproduction, high contrast ratios, the ability to achieve very thin displays, and the potential for large-area fabrication due to their molecular structure.

  A typical OLED device consists of an emissive layer (π- conjugated organic molecules/ oligomers) sandwiched between two electrodes. The basic concept behinds the OLEDs is generation of holes and electrons from the opposite electrodes of the device, which from hole and electron pair (exciton) in the emissive layer. The resultant exciton while deactivating to the ground state emits the light. The color of the emission depends on HOMO-LUMO energy gap of the emissive layer. The major advantage of OLEDs is the ability to tune the color of the light through versatile structural tuning. 

OLED devices are classified into three generations:

Generation 1- OLEDs based on fluorescent materials

Generation 2 – OLEDs based on phosphorescent materials 

Generation 3 – OLEDs based on thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) materials, which is the most active area of OLEDs research today.

    In our research group, we focus on molecular engineering and synthesis of organic luminescent materials that allow us to modulate the energy gap for OLED and improve the efficiency of electroluminescence.