IEEE Awards Booklet - 2017 - 12

2017 ieee medals

IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal
Sponsored by the Federation of Electric Power Companies, Japan

Ching W. Tang, Stephen R. Forrest,
and Mark E. Thompson
For their pioneering work on organic devices, leading to
organic light-emitting diode displays

he pioneering achievements of Ching W. Tang, Stephen
R. Forrest, and Mark Thompson in developing, advancing, and commercializing light-emitting diodes (OLEDs)
have created a multibillion-dollar industry for advanced lighting
and display applications. OLED technology features a series of
thin light-emitting fields to provide brighter light but with less
energy compared to traditional LED bulbs and liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). It was the groundbreaking discoveries of Tang during the late 1970s that thin-film devices could emit light when
a forward voltage was applied that demonstrated the potential
of OLED technology and spurred a new field focused on developing organic optoelectronic devices. He created the organic
heterojunction, implemented the double-layer structure for enhancing the eﬃciency of electron hole recombination, developed
new approaches for eﬃcient electrodes, and discovered important
emitter materials. Based on Tang's accomplishments, the first fullcolor active matrix OLED displays were commercialized.
Building on Tang's OLED foundations, Forrest and Thompson took the technology to the next level by recognizing that
OLED eﬃciency was being limited by the spin of excited states.
They introduced iridium-based phosphorescent dyes that increased internal OLED eﬃciency from 25% to near 100% and
enabled OLEDs to compete with LCDs. To overcome the belief
that OLEDs would never be stable enough for use in commercial electronic devices, Universal Display Corporation (UDC)

was founded to tackle OLED performance and stability issues.
With UDC, Forrest and Thompson engineered electron and
hole balance in the emissive layer using multiple new "guest and
host" materials in conjunction with new device design and demonstrated high-eﬃciency red and green OLEDs with less than
5% degradation over multiple years of continuous use at display
brightness. Their work fueled the launch of today's multibilliondollar OLED industry that provides the display technologies
dominating mobile electronic appliances and large-screen, highdefinition televisions.
An American Physical Society Fellow and member of the
U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Tang is a professor at
the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, and a professor at the University of Rochester,
Rochester, NY, USA.
An IEEE Life Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,
Forrest is the Peter A. Franken Distinguished University Professor
and Paul G. Goebel Professor of Engineering at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
A U.S. National Academy of Inventors Fellow and recipient of
the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2015),Thompson
holds the Ray R. Irani Chair of Chemistry, Materials Science, and
Chemical Engineering at the University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Scope: For outstanding contributions to material and device science and technology, including practical application.

12 | 2017 IEEE awards bOOkLET

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2017