SID 2026 The OLED Strategies of Samsung And LG

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A clear trend is emerging at SID Display Week 2026: OLEDs need to become brighter and more durable. However, the industry giants are taking different approaches to achieve this goal. While Samsung Display is focusing on new fluorescent materials with PSF, LG Display is pushing ahead with multi-layer tandem architecture for vehicles and IT.

The current generation of displays offers technical advantages for hardware developers, system integrators and the thermal management of end devices. At SID Display Week 2026 in Los Angeles, the industry is intensively addressing two classic weak points of OLED technology: the loss of color saturation at extreme brightness levels (color washout) and the degradation of organic layers under permanent thermal stress (burn-in). It is interesting to note that the major panel manufacturers are taking completely different approaches to solving these problems.

SF And LEAD for Mobile Devices

Samsung Display is focusing on innovations at the material and optical level with its new Flex Chroma Pixe. panel, which is specially designed for smartphones and wearables. The centrepiece is the first use of PSF (Phosphorescent Sensitized Fluorescence) as an emitter material.

PSF uses phosphorescent materials as so-called sensitizers to capture the internally generated triplet excitons and transfer their energy highly efficiently to a fluorescent emitter. The metrological result: the display achieves 3,000 nits in High Brightness Mode (HBM) and covers 96% of the huge BT.2020 color space. This is 1.7 times the current DCI-P3 standard. At the trade fair, Samsung used direct image comparisons to demonstrate the impact of this extended color space and the prevention of typical color washout at high luminance in practice

PSF is combined with Samsung's LEAD architecture (Low Energy Advanced Display), which works without classic circular polarizers. As polarizers often swallow up more than 50 percent of the light yield, eliminating them increases light extraction. The display achieves 3,000 nits in High Brightness Mode (HBM) and covers 96% of the BT.2020 color space. This is 1.7 times the current DCI-P3 standard.

Samsung also demonstrated progress in sensor integration. Smartphone panels integrate organic photodiodes (OPDs) with a density of 500 ppi directly into the pixel grid across the entire surface. This turns the entire display into a biometric scanner that can also record vital parameters such as heart rate and blood pressure.

Tandem OLEDs of the 3rd Generation for Automotive

LG Display is taking a completely different approach. Instead of relying primarily on new emitter molecules, LG is scaling up the architecture. The company presented the 3rd generation of its tandem OLED technology at the trade fair. The primary target market: automotive and software-defined vehicles (SDVs).

In a tandem OLED, several organic, light-emitting layers are stacked on top of each other. The load of light generation is thus distributed over two layers. The 3rd generation brings massive leaps in service life: LG speaks of over 15,000 hours of operation at room temperature without degradation. This is more than double that of the previous generation.

On a physical level, LG Display has also improved the charge carrier balance in the panel. In organic semiconductors, the mobility of the positive holes (defect electrons) is usually higher than that of the electrons, which leads to edge recombination, heat generation and material degradation. By using a new material doping in the transport layers, LG was able to synchronize the speed of movement of holes and electrons.

The recombination to excitons now takes place exactly in the middle of the emitter layers. The result of this improved internal quantum efficiency: the automotive panel achieves a brightness of 1,200 nits, reduces power consumption by 18% and significantly reduces thermal stress in the component. For developers of automotive displays, the tandem structure solves the biggest OLED problem in cars: low durability under the influence of extreme temperatures and direct sunlight.

LG will start mass production of these panels for the automotive market at the end of 2026 and demonstrated the potential directly on a 57-inch wide pillar-to-pillar (P2P) concept display.

Two Solutions, One Goal

SID 2026 shows that although OLED technology is mature, it is still a long way from being fully developed. For system developers in the mobile sector (smartphones, smartwatches), the sensitization of fluorescent emitters (PSF) and polarization-free design will be the key to greater efficiency. In the automotive and IT sector (laptops, monitors), where long-life static displays and extreme operating temperatures predominate, the robust, multi-layer tandem architecture is becoming the industry standard. (heh)

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