Towards sustainable perovskite light-emitting diodes

Abstract

Perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) are advancing to become the frontrunner candidates for the next generation of lighting and display technologies. However, despite rapid technical development, a thorough understanding of PeLEDs’ environmental and economic impacts—essential information for future commercialization—is currently lacking. Here we assess the environmental and economic performance of 18 representative PeLEDs, aiming to identify effective industrial techniques to develop sustainable PeLEDs from a life-cycle perspective. We find that, like mature organic LEDs, PeLEDs show excellent environmental performance. In addition, we demonstrate that lead is not a major source of toxicity from PeLEDs. We estimate that, to commercialize PeLEDs and improve their sustainability, their lifetime should reach the order of 10,000 hours to compensate for the relative environmental impacts. The techno-economic assessment indicates that the cost of future PeLEDs will probably be in the vicinity of US$100 m–2, comparable to that of commercial organic LED panels. Overall, this study shows the potential of PeLEDs as next-generation lighting technology from environmental, economic and technical perspectives, providing insights relevant to their future development. Perovskite light-emitting diodes, an emerging lighting and display technology, are receiving increasing attention by both academia and industry. This study assesses their prospects from an environmental, economic and technical perspective.