organic light-emitting diode (OLED or Organic LED)

In 1960, Martin Pope and some of his co-workers at New York University developed ohmic dark-injecting electrode contacts to organic crystals.^[13][14][15] They further described the necessary energetic requirements (work functions) for hole and electron injecting electrode contacts. These contacts are the basis of charge injection in all modern OLED devices. Pope's group also first observed direct current (DC) electroluminescence under vacuum on a single pure crystal of anthracene and on anthracene crystals doped with tetracene in 1963^[16] using a small area silver electrode at 400 volts. The proposed mechanism was field-accelerated electron excitation of molecular fluorescence.