In a new UK-funded research, scientists from Paragraf and Queen Mary University of London have successfully fabricated an Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) with a monolayer graphene anode instead of the problematic ITO.

Graphene OLED. Sapphire substrate/monolayer graphene/NPB: 50 nm/Alq3: 50 nm/LiF: 1.5 nm/Al: 100 nm. Image from study in AOM

Professor Colin Humphreys of Queen Mary and Paragraf, says: “Because of its importance and scarcity there have been many attempts to replace ITO, but no material has been found to have a comparable performance in an electronic or optical device until now. Our paper is the first paper in the world to demonstrate that graphene can replace ITO in an electronic/optical device. We have shown that a graphene-OLED has identical performance to an ITO-OLED. ITO-OLEDs are widely used as the touch screens on our mobile phones.”