Scientists create the world’s smallest pixel with a diameter of just 300 nanometers – it could be used to create a 1080p display with a diameter of 1 mm
Scientists at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg in Germany have developed a recent form of organic LED that is many times smaller than existing options – measuring just 300 x 300 nanometers, according to SciTechDaily. When enlarged and built into a standard display, it would enable a 1080p screen as miniature as 1mm in diameter.
In the quest for lighter, more detailed and brighter displays for augmented reality headsets and astute glasses, the most compact single light-emitting diodes available from 2025 will be micro OLEDs. They are just under five by five micrometers each, which is absolutely minuscule compared to even the mini-LEDs that power many contemporary high-end TVs. But recent nanometer-scale OLEDs from this German university are more than 10 times smaller.
“Using a metal contact that allows current to be injected into an organic light-emitting diode while simultaneously amplifying and emitting the generated light, we have created a pixel that emits orange light in an area measuring just 300 by 300 nanometers. This pixel is as bright as a conventional OLED pixel with normal dimensions of 5 by 5 micrometers,” says Bert Hecht, w study published in Science Advances.
As this technology develops, it will be possible to develop ultra-compact displays for mobile devices, providing huge savings in weight and power, as well as recent, highly detailed displays (all the better for gaming). Huge pixel densities can be achieved at this scale, unlocking realistic visuals if you can get the computing power necessary to render them.
The researchers achieved this recent feat by modifying existing OLED structures. Simple miniaturization of OLED designs leads to problems with the gold antenna at the heart of each OLED, which gradually leaches its gold surface into the surrounding organic material, causing a tiny circuit.
To prevent this, researchers introduced a specially developed insulating layer around the optical antenna in each diode, concentrating the currents and enabling long-term operation of the OLED at the nanoscale. Still, that “long” timeline only involved two weeks of testing, so turning this proof-of-concept technology into something that’s viable for real-world products and economics is another matter entirely.
Scientists will now work to enhance the range of colors the LEDs can emit to the full RGB spectrum and improve their efficiency. As it currently stands, it is only one percent, which would make these displays extremely power-hungry.
But if they can achieve this, they will create displays so miniature and delicate that they can be integrated into almost anything, anywhere.
