Graphene has had a rough go of it of late. After years of breathless reporting on its potential as a long-term solution for logic circuits (computer processors and memory), interest as waned as fundamental research problems have refused to resolve. This doesn’t mean that graphene has no electronics applications, however, and a research team from the University of Manchester has published a report detailing how flexible 2D graphene arrays could be used in the next-generation of LED screens.

This new project differs from earlier demonstrations of graphene technology. In September, the Cambridge Graphene Centre demonstrated a display that incorporated a graphene electrode. The new LEDs built by the University of Manchester in this experiment were apparently engineered at an atomic level from multiple layers of crystal lattice as shown below.

This type of structure implements multiple layers of materials horizontally, but because each lattice is only a few atoms thick, the final display is semi-transparent, extremely thin, and according to the research team, at least semi-flexible and durable. The near-term applications of this technology could be in optoelectronics. Electron movement is controlled via quantum wells (a quantum well is a layer of material that constricts the movements of electrons to particular dimensions to ensure energy arrives where it’s meant to go).

One of the major downsides to working with many advanced materials has been their stability — we’ve covered several promising developments that decay so rapidly as to make any type of manufacturing quite difficult. This graphene design, however, appears to buck that trend; the University of Manchester team certified that the graphene-based LEDs have remained robust and continued to emit light for weeks.

The team claims that these graphene-based LEDs can emit light across their entire surface (apparently obviating or reducing the need for a backlight) and have reached efficiencies that are already comparable to organic LEDs in terms of quantum efficiency (photons emitted per electron injected).

Whether or not that means graphene-based LED technology can supplant OLED is, of course, an open question. While OLEDs have become popular in certain Samsung displays, the OLED revolution in mainstream television has yet to occur. What was once predicted as the Next Big Thing after 1080p has been largely supplanted by conventional LCD technology at higher 4K resolutions. Right now. OLED has just one major vendor — LG — offering serious support, and that’s not enough to drive long-term R&D for continuing the technology in large panels.

It’s not clear if graphene LEDs can drive the rich, vibrant colors that have made OLEDs desirable, but if they can, it’s possible that TV manufacturers will finally be able to deliver the promise of OLED in a different technology. Of course, given the long lead time between research and commercialization, we’re still talking about advances that could take five to ten years to hit the market.