Hitachi Research Laboratory (HRL) unveiled a new prototype OLED lighting panel that was made using a single-stage coating process. Hitachi developed a new self-organized "spontaneous multilayer light-emitting layer formation material" which is a mix of RGB small-molecule emitter materials. The process simply coats the panel once with this material and then the three different layers (red, green, blue) are automatically formed in the correct order.
The three emitter dopants use the same host material. HRL still managed to create a very efficient OLED (up to 70 lm/W, with a light extraction layer). Eliminating two steps from the deposition process using this new coating technique and materials will theoretically enable cheaper panel production.
