Designer copper complexes could offer a way to reduce OLEDs’ reliance on scarce, costly metals such as iridium—but the 2019 result is a materials-chemistry advance, not proof of cheaper commercial screens. Researchers engineered copper emitters to address two problems that had limited their performance: long-lived excited states and energy lost without producing light.
Why look for an alternative to iridium?
OLEDs use light-emitting materials, including organometallic complexes, to turn electrical excitation into light. Iridium-based emitters can be efficient, but iridium is a precious metal; its scarcity and cost have motivated work on emitters based on more abundant elements. Copper is a candidate, but simply substituting copper for iridium does not solve the photophysics that an effective emitter requires.
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Copper complexes have faced two linked challenges. Their triplet excited states can persist for a relatively long time, and excited energy can be lost through non-radiative decay instead of leaving as light. For an LED, those losses and delays can limit how effectively an emitter converts excitation into photons.
How the researchers redesigned the copper emitters
Researchers led by Hamze and colleagues designed copper complexes using bulky cyclic (alkyl)(amino)carbene ligands and nitrogen-bound amide ligands. The ligands constrain the copper complexes in a linear configuration and make it harder for the excited molecules to deform into shapes associated with non-radiative energy loss.
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The design also brought the energies of the singlet and triplet excited states closer together. That smaller gap is central to the approach: it lets thermal energy available at room temperature help move population from a triplet state into a singlet state that can emit light.
How thermally activated delayed fluorescence works
- Excitation: Energy promotes electrons in the emitter into excited states.
- Triplet-to-singlet transfer: In the designed complexes, heat at room temperature can help move population from a triplet state to a nearby singlet state.
- Light emission: The excited system returns to its ground state and emits a photon. This process is called thermally activated delayed fluorescence, or TADF.
The ligand structure addresses a different part of the problem: limiting molecular deformation that can send energy down non-radiative pathways. Together, the state-energy design and structural constraint seek to make more of the excitation available for light emission.
What the reported efficiency figure means—and does not mean
Chemistry World’s 2019 report says that over 99% of electrons promoted to an excited state resulted in photon emission for the studied complexes. That is a result reported for those materials. It is not a measurement of a finished OLED’s efficiency, wall-plug efficiency, display performance, operating lifetime, or commercial manufacturing yield.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallMark Thompson, an inorganic chemist at the University of Southern California, described the result in the report this way: “We’ve demonstrated that you can make a copper compound behave as though it were an iridium compound for all practical purposes.” The comparison refers to the behavior achieved through this molecular design; it does not mean copper is inherently equivalent to iridium or that the complexes have established commercial-device performance.
Could copper replace iridium in OLEDs?
It is a possible research route, not an established replacement. Copper’s greater abundance offers a potential materials-cost advantage over scarce precious metals. But the metal alone does not determine the cost or performance of an OLED emitter: excited-state behavior, radiative versus non-radiative decay, and the manufacturing practicality of the complete molecule all matter.
The bulky, specialized ligands that help solve the photophysical challenges may themselves be expensive and labor-intensive to make. Kenneth Wärnmark, an inorganic chemist at Lund University, cautioned in the 2019 report: “This is a step towards the use of earth-abundant metals in photofunctional materials, but it’s not the step.” The qualification captures the distinction between demonstrating promising molecular behavior and establishing a practical product.
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What the 2019 result does not establish
- It does not show that OLEDs using these specific complexes are currently sold.
- It does not establish that the material can be manufactured at scale or that its ligand synthesis is inexpensive.
- It does not provide finished-device efficiency, operating lifetime, or cost per device.
- It does not show that copper-based emitters will be cheaper overall once synthesis and device manufacturing are included.
The underlying study was reported by Tim Wogan in Chemistry World on 13 February 2019 as “Designer copper complexes offer route to cheaper organic LEDs.” The report identifies the study as R. Hamze et al., Science 363, 601 (2019), DOI 10.1126/science.aav2865. Read the Chemistry World report.
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