A research team at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) has discovered surface plasmon-enhanced spontaneous emission based on an organic LED (OLED), a finding expected to improve the device's energy consumption, KAIST officials announced last week. For surface plasmon localization, professor Kyung-Cheol Choi of the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and his team deposited silver nanoparticles thermally in a high vacuum on cathode. Since plasmons provide a strong oscillator decay channel, time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) results displayed a 1.75-fold increased emission rate, and continuous wave PL results showed a twofold enhanced intensity. "The method using surface plasmon represents a new technology to enhance the emission efficiency of OLED. It is expected to greatly contribute to the development of new technologies in OLED and flexible display, as well as securing original technology," Choi said. The finding was published in the April issue of Applied Physics Letters and the June 25 issue of Optics Express and will also featured as the research highlight of the August issues of Nature Photonics and Virtual Journal of Ultrafast Science.For more information, visit: www.kaist.edu