A research team led by Professor Tae-Woo Lee (Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea & SN Display Co., Ltd) has announced a major breakthrough in display technology. The team has developed a revolutionary technology to mass produce ultra-high color purity perovskite nanocrystals (PeNCs), the core material for next-generation displays, without the need for high temperature, vacuum, or specialized gas facilities. This study, which proves that 100% photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) can be maintained from lab to industrial scale, was published in the world's leading scientific journal, Nature, on February 18, 2026.
The current megatrend in the display market focuses on "Immersive visual experience", which aims to replicate images as vividly as the human eye perceives them. To achieve this, displays must support a wider color gamut, specifically meeting the Rec. 2020 color standard. This next-generation standard represents a 40-percent expansion in color range compared to the currently used DCI-P3 standard. However, existing organic emitters and quantum dots have a relatively wide full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 50 nm and 30 nm, respectively, posing a fundamental limit to meeting this stringent color standard.
In contrast, perovskite emitter features an exceptionally narrow FWHM of approximately 20 nm, making them the only viable candidate to satisfy the Rec. 2020 standard. With their high color purity, excellent optoelectronic properties, and low material costs, perovskites are the leading candidates for ultra-high definition TVs and next-generation immersive applications like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) displays.
Professor Tae-Woo Lee's research team has been a global leader in the field of perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) for the past decade. In 2014, the team secured eight pioneering foundational patents related to perovskite emitters. In 2015, they achieved a major milestone by elevating the external quantum efficiency (EQE) of PeLEDs from 0.1% to 8.53%, a breakthrough published in Science. This work established Professor Lee as a pioneer in the field of perovskite emitters. Since then, his team has continued to lead global research by developing high efficiency perovskite emitters, pushing EQE beyond 20%, a widely recognized threshold for commercialization. Furthermore, in 2022, the team significantly enhanced the commercial viability of PeLED technology by simultaneously achieving a near-theoretical-limit EQE of 28.9% and an operational lifetime of approximately 30,000 hours, as reported in Nature.
Beyond academic excellence, Professor Lee is accelerating the commercialization of this technology through his faculty-founded startup, SN Display Co., Ltd. The company has garnered significant global attention by showcasing perovskite-based display prototypes every year at major international electronics exhibitions such as CES (Consumer Electronics Show, USA) and MWC (Mobile World Congress, Spain). Notably, at CES 2026, SN Display achieved the remarkable achievement by winning the Innovation Award, the first ever for the perovskite emitter field, gaining worldwide recognition for the technology's immense value.
In this study, Professor Tae-Woo Lee's research team proposed a new synthesis method that overcomes the limitations of existing PeNC production techniques and identified a previously unknown synthesis mechanism. Conventionally, high quality PeNCs have been synthesized using the 'Hot-injection' method, which involves injecting materials into a hot solution above 150 °C. However, this approach presented several drawbacks, including safety risks such as fire or explosion due to high temperatures and rapid temperature drops, as well as the necessity for specialized facilities to block oxygen and moisture. As an alternative, room temperature (20-25 °C) synthesis methods such as 'ligand-assisted reprecipitation' have been suggested, but they faced limitations where the rapid precipitation rate led to inconsistent quality and a sharp decline in productivity during mass production.
To overcome these challenges, Professor Lee's team developed the 'Cold-injection' method, which allows for high quality PeNC synthesis under ambient conditions. The 'Cold-injection' process is characterized by lowering the temperature to near 0 °C, offering the advantage of eliminating heat related safety issues. It also significantly reduces production costs as it does not require specialized facilities and is highly suitable for mass synthesis. Notably, the team discovered the previously unknown 'pseudo-emulsion' mechanism. The pseudo-emulsion state, combined with the cold temperature environment, effectively slows down the crystal formation rate, suppressing the formation of defects and enabling the creation of highly crystalline, uniform PeNCs. This approach enables consistent high productivity, even when scaling up to mass production.
These research findings are expected to substantially accelerate the commercialization of perovskite emitters. The developed 'Cold-injection' method offers immense advantages in terms of mass synthesis. Even when scaled up to a large 20-liter reactor, the research team achieved near-unity PLQY (~100%), identical to results obtained at the laboratory scale (~ml scale). Furthermore, PeLED using the PeNCs recorded an EQE of 29.6%, demonstrating world-leading performance. Additionally, in collaboration with SN Display Co., Ltd., a faculty-founded startup of Professor Tae-Woo Lee, the team fabricated color conversion films based on these mass-produced PeNCs and integrated them into actual tablet displays, providing a compelling demonstration of their commercial potential.
Professor Tae-Woo Lee stated, "Through the newly developed 'Cold-injection' method, we have successfully achieved mass production of high quality PeNCs at a scale viable for actual commercialization without compromising efficiency or uniformity." He added, "We expect this achievement to serve as a catalyst to accelerate the commercialization of perovskite technology in the next-generation display market.
This Nature publication represents the research team's third paper this year in Nature and Science, following two major breakthroughs reported in January. Such consecutive publications in top-tier journals underscore the team's sustained leadership in optoelectronic materials and device innovation.
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (RS-2025-00560490), the Pioneer Research Center Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (RS-2022 NR067540), the Technology Innovation Program (RS-2025-25393382, Development of perovskite nano emissive material for AR/VR near-eye displays) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources (MOTIR, Korea), and the Technology Innovation Program (RS 2024-00425883/Optimized Perovskite Nanocrystal Resin Composition and Prototyping Large-Area Continuous Color Conversion Film) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE, Korea).
□ Curriculum Vitae (Prof. Tae-Woo Lee)
1. Personal Information
○ Professor of Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University
