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Researchers have made individual perovskite LEDs about 90 nanometres wide—roughly the scale of a typical virus—and also demonstrated a monochrome display with pixels measuring 70 × 95 micrometres. Those are two different achievements: the display did not use 90-nanometre pixels.
What does “virus-sized LED” mean?
In a 19 March 2025 report, Nature described individual LEDs about 90 nanometres (nm) wide. A nanometre is one-billionth of a metre. The comparison to a virus describes the width of these individual light-emitting devices; it does not mean a complete screen was built from virus-sized display pixels.
The devices are perovskite light-emitting diodes, or PeLEDs. The reported work demonstrates that individual light-emitting elements can be fabricated at this scale. It is distinct from integrating those elements into a display whose pixels are equally small.
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The monochrome display’s pixels were reported as 70 × 95 micrometres (μm), according to Hackster.io’s account of the work. A micrometre is 1,000 times larger than a nanometre. At less than 100 μm across, these display pixels are around the width of a human hair.
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The distinction matters because a pixel is a display element, while an individual LED is a light-emitting device. The reported 90 nm measurement applies to the smallest individual LEDs; 70 × 95 μm applies to pixels in the monochrome display. They are not competing measurements of the same screen.
| Demonstration | Reported scale | What the measurement describes |
|---|---|---|
| Individual PeLEDs | About 90 nm wide (Nature, 19 March 2025) | Individual LEDs, not pixels in the demonstrated display |
| Monochrome display | 70 × 95 μm (Hackster.io, 2025) | Integrated display pixels |
How were the tiny devices made and measured?
Hackster.io describes lithographically patterned electrical contacts that localize where current flows, defining active pixels and limiting non-radiative losses at their boundaries. Its account describes a stack comprising glass, indium tin oxide, silicon dioxide, transport layers, perovskite and a metal electrode. These construction details are reported in the secondary coverage.
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The smallest LEDs were too small for optical microscopy to resolve. Hackster.io reports that the team used an Ocean Optics QE Pro spectrometer to measure emitted spectra and a hyperspectral microscope to assess the devices. The use of these instruments reflects an important difference between making a nanoscale emitter and directly seeing it with an ordinary optical microscope.
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What does 127,000 pixels per inch refer to?
Hackster.io reports a figure of 127,000 pixels per inch in connection with the nanoscale LED work. It should not be read as the resolution of the 70 × 95 μm monochrome display: those figures describe different parts of the research and different scales. The report also says the pixel sidewall-to-area ratio reaches 20% at around 100 nm, a paper-derived manufacturing constraint as described by Hackster.io.
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Could this technology appear in VR or AR headsets?
The proposed application is replacing traditional micro-LEDs in virtual- and augmented-reality headsets, potentially enabling higher resolution and lower manufacturing costs. That is a future possibility, not a demonstrated commercial result. The reported work does not establish that a consumer headset uses these PeLEDs, nor that they have already reduced display costs.
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