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Designer copper complexes could offer a way to reduce OLEDs’ reliance on scarce, costly metals such as iridium. A 2019 study reported highly efficient light emission from specially engineered copper compounds, but it did not show a commercial OLED, lower manufacturing costs, or a device ready to replace iridium-based emitters.
Why look for alternatives to iridium in OLEDs?
Some OLED emitters use organometallic compounds containing precious metals such as iridium. These compounds can emit light efficiently, but the scarcity and cost of the metal create an incentive to investigate more abundant alternatives.
Copper is a candidate, but using it is not simply a matter of swapping one metal for another. Copper emitters have faced a challenge: their excited triplet states can last relatively long, leaving more opportunity for energy to escape through non-radiative decay instead of producing light. The lifetime of that excited state also matters because it must be compatible with the rate at which an OLED operates.
How the copper-complex design works
Bulky ligands constrain the molecule
In the 2019 work, researchers led by Hamze used bulky cyclic (alkyl)(amino)carbene and nitrogen-bound amide ligands to hold the copper complexes in a linear configuration. The design was intended to limit molecular deformation in the excited state, which can otherwise provide a route for energy to be lost without light emission.
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Thermal energy helps turn triplets into light
When an emitter absorbs energy, electrons enter excited states. The researchers brought the energies of the singlet and triplet states closer together. At room temperature, thermal energy can then help population move from a triplet state to a nearby singlet state. As the molecule returns to its ground state, the singlet can emit a photon. This process is called thermally activated delayed fluorescence, or TADF.
The ligand strategy addresses two linked problems: it helps reduce energy loss from molecular distortion and supports the conversion of triplet-state population into a light-emitting singlet state. The proposed advantage comes from this molecular design, not from copper being inherently equivalent to iridium.
What the reported efficiency figure means
Chemistry World’s 2019 account of the study says that over 99% of electrons promoted to an excited state in the studied complexes resulted in photon emission. That is a reported result for those complexes. It is not a measurement of OLED wall-plug efficiency, display efficiency, device lifetime, or the performance of a finished commercial screen.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchIn the same report, inorganic chemist Mark Thompson of the University of Southern California said, “We’ve demonstrated that you can make a copper compound behave as though it were an iridium compound for all practical purposes.” The statement describes the promise of the compounds’ photophysical behavior; it does not establish that copper can replace iridium in a manufactured OLED.
Could copper make OLEDs cheaper?
Potentially, replacing a scarce precious metal could reduce one material-cost pressure. But the metal alone does not determine the cost of an OLED emitter. The ligands used to make and control the complex also matter: bulky, complex ligands may be expensive and labor-intensive to synthesize.
Kenneth Wärnmark, an inorganic chemist at Lund University, characterized the work as “a step towards the use of earth-abundant metals in photofunctional materials, but it’s not the step.” That caution captures the distinction between demonstrating promising molecular behavior and proving an economical manufacturing process.
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| Question | What the 2019 report supports | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Metal supply | Copper is being explored as an alternative to scarce precious metals such as iridium. | A measured cost advantage for an OLED made with the studied complexes. |
| Light emission | Over 99% of excited electrons in the reported complexes resulted in photon emission, according to Chemistry World’s account. | Finished-device efficiency, screen brightness, or power consumption. |
| Manufacturing | The researchers designed and studied copper complexes with bulky ligands. | Scale-up, production cost, or commercial availability; ligand synthesis may itself be costly and labor-intensive. |
| Product readiness | The work presents a route toward photofunctional materials. | That OLEDs using these specific compounds are sold, or their device lifetime and performance. |
What remains before these emitters could replace iridium
The study, identified by Chemistry World as R. Hamze et al., Science 363, 601 (2019), DOI 10.1126/science.aav2865, concerns the behavior of designed molecular complexes. The report does not establish that these particular compounds have been incorporated into commercially available OLEDs or manufactured at scale.
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