According to researchers at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles, the new structure has the advantage of allowing different colors to be deposited without the use of external shadow masks, thus reducing fabrication costs. Also, the full-color pixels can be smaller and more numerous than conventional red, green, and blue triads, which means higher resolution is possible than with conventional devices.
Work is still at an early stage, but initial experiments have been successful.
The basic idea is very simple. Next, plastic molding techniques are used to create pyramid structures over the TFT electrical contact pads, with openings for the electrical connection to be made. The next step is to deposit the red, green, and blue OLEDs on the different faces of the pyramids. The substrate was cut with a razor blade and the photoluminescence from the Alq 3 layer was captured using fluorescence optical microscopy. For this to work properly in the final device, it is important that there be no electrical contact between the layer on one face and that on the next.