Baodan Zhao

Baodan Zhao, 34, has overcome multiple barriers for using novel semiconductor materials known as perovskites in light-emitting diode (LED) displays. Her work could lead to cheaper, brighter, more color-accurate screens—all while boosting energy efficiency. 

“Perovskites have outstanding theoretical properties, like color tunability and color purity,” she says. “They can also be processed in solution for use in flexible electronics.” And since the raw materials for perovskites are cheaper than silicon to turn into finished products, perovskite LEDs (PeLEDs) also have a cost advantage. 

But the earliest perovskite LEDs, produced in 2014, were dim, short-lived, and inefficient.

One of Zhao’s first breakthroughs—while she was still a PhD student at the University of Cambridge—involved boosting PeLED efficiency in the lab from 0.7 percent to 20 percent by adding an insulating polymer between its perovskite layers. This result was published as the cover story in Nature Photonics. 

Next, after moving back to her native China, she helped tackle what she calls the “grandest challenge” of PeLEDs: increasing their useful lifetimes. She did this by adding a material at the perovskite boundaries that prevented charged particles from migrating through and degrading PeLEDs while in use. 

Then, in 2024, Zhao modified green PeLEDs by adding specific impurities into the perovskite material. This led to a new brightness record of 1.16 million nits. By comparison, most laptop screens top out at around 1,000 nits. 

Zhao is now working to miniaturize PeLEDs without compromising their efficiency, something current display technologies struggle with. In a recent Nature paper, she and her team built PeLEDs that were one-fifth the size of the smallest LEDs ever made before in the lab.