A group of scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has recently developed a new type of LED made from plastic like organic materials, which is an important step towards the goal of improving the efficiency of light bulbs. This cheap and efficient LED is designed with a simplified "tandem" structure, and can produce twice as much light as a normal LED——including the white light desired for home and office lighting.

This new type of LED is made from organic, carbon-based materials, like plastic, rather than from more expensive semi-conductive materials such as gallium which also require more complicated manufacturing processes. Besides, this new LED is the first organic white-light LED to operate within only a single active layer rather than several sophisticated layers. And higher efficiency can be achieved by putting two of these single-layer LEDs together in a tandem unit. The LED is also reported to achieve a CRI rating of nearly 70, almost good enough to read by. Progress in this area promises further reduction in the price of organic LEDs.

"This work is important because it is the realization of rather high efficiency white emission by a tandem structure," says Dongge Ma, the leader of the research team at the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research carried out by Ma and his colleagues was funded by the Hundreds Talents Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China, the Foundation of Jilin Research Council, Foundation of Changchun Research Council, Science Fund for Creative Research Groups of NSFC, and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.