Fighter Jet OLEDs to Use More Emissive Layers Than Smartphones

What happened

According to industry sources on Oct. 26, South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources (MOTIR) is planning an OLED research and development project for fighter jet cockpits with LG Display and Hanwha Systems. OLED displays for fighter jets are expected to adopt multi-stack tandem structures with more emissive layers than smartphone displays: fighter jets have greater power supply capacity than smartphones, allowing additional emissive layers to improve brightness and lifespan, while adding emissive layers also increases the required driving voltage. Large cockpit displays in South Korea's KF-21 fighter jet and the U.S. F-15 series currently use liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Key development priorities include suppressing lateral current leakage through the charge generation layers (CGLs) between emissive layers, which could make adjacent pixels that should remain off emit faint light and distort colors during nighttime low-brightness operation; improving red-emitting materials whose long-wavelength emissions can be amplified by night vision goggles and interfere with pilots' observation; optical technologies that narrow the direction of light emission, such as microcavities, distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) and metalenses, as alternatives to the viewing-angle restriction films LCDs use, which cause light loss, increasing power consumption and heat generation; and overcoming OLED brightness degradation at low temperatures such as around minus 40 degrees Celsius, while withstanding vibration and shock with redundancy. An industry official said that to apply OLED technology to actual military equipment, manufacturers must secure improvements in lifespan through multi-stack tandem structures alongside advances in emissive materials and optical design.

Impact and signal

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Source and time

Source: The Elec · 10/26/2026 · View original source