Chemistry in Pictures: Lightbox

One challenge researchers are trying to overcome is making light sources that are bright, are more portable, and have tunable colors. Lights with all of these properties are thought to be possible if they are made from organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which can use flat and bendable layers of organic semiconductors to make light rather than rigid inorganic ones. Kou Yoshida, a research fellow at the University of St Andrews’s Organic Semiconductor Centre, made this handheld OLED cube by applying semiconductors—an organometallic iridium complex (red squares) and a perylene derivative (blue squares)—onto glass surfaces and assembling those into a cube. One of Yoshida’s goals is to make a portable OLED device that could be used in, for example, antibacterial and cancer therapies that use photoactive molecules.

Submitted by Kou Yoshida. Follow @EZC_group and @StAndrewsOsc on Twitter.

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