LG Will Bring More Affordable and Brighter OLED TVs in Future that Will Even Last Longer

LG is a behemoth when it comes to the TV and Display industry. Not only does it produces its own product but is also a huge supplier to many other tech brands.

What is the technology?

Developed in Japan, eLEAP is a different way of making OLED panels. It's short for "environment positive lithography with maskless deposition, extreme long life, low power and high luminance, any shape patterning".

eLEAP is an alternative method of producing OLED panels, and they have been testing it since its announcement in 2022. But its main focus was on small display like phone screen and car dashboard displays, but is now trying the tech for significantly larger display panels – TV panels.

Why is LG testing eLEAP a big deal?

Conventional OLED panels are made with fine metal masks, which are thin metal plates with lots of tiny holes in them. Those masks ensure that organic material is deposited on the display substrate with pixel-perfect precision to ensure that each pixel lights up uniformly without overlapping or being poorly aligned.

eLEAP does things differently. Instead of fine metal masks it uses a lithography process to create the OLED pixels. And according to trade site The Elec, LG Display already has the appropriate equipment to trial eLEAP in its OLED facility in South Korea – and it's looking to test on TV-sized panels. Samsung Display is also reportedly testing the technology.

How is it a big leap forward in TV technology?

It could help eradicate dreaded OLED screen burn issues - they're much more energy efficient, so you could have higher brightness without increasing power consumption – or use less power at the same brightness. That energy efficiency also means less heat generation – and heat is a key cause of OLED burn-in, so there'd be little danger of the higher brightness causing a burn-in problem.

There is also the potential for eLEAP to be more efficient to produce, which would mean cheaper OLED panels, which may mean cheaper TVs – or, at least, maybe OLEDs such as the LG C5 could finally get significantly brighter without becoming as expensive as the flagship LG G5.