Performance improvements of inorganic and organic light-emitting diodes over time. The black line summarizes almost three decades of work with a variety of inorganic structures, and ends with the most efficient LED produced to date. The mid-1990s witnessed the development of high-performance, nitride-based LEDs, indicated by the blue line that sprouts a green branch. The nearly straight green line shows the improving performance of OLEDs whose organic layers are small molecules (SM), while the orange line shows performance improvements of OLEDs whose organic layers are polymers. Near the vertical axis, black arrows indicate several benchmark efficiencies of conventional lighting devices.

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© 2001 American Institute of Physics