Behind the Cover: December 2023

Each month, Physics Today editors explore the research and design choices that inspired the latest cover of the magazine.

In their quest to push the boundaries of immersive technology, many consumer electronics companies are turning their sights to curved screens for phones, televisions, and more. Organic LEDs (OLEDs) are the technology of choice for those devices because they are thin enough to be bent and can be turned off completely, creating true blackness on the screen.

In the cover story of the December issue of Physics Today, Simon Trudel, a physical chemist at the University of Calgary, explains how organic electronics can be created using sustainable processes. The key is making the thin-film layers of OLEDs from amorphous materials, which require less heat to produce during manufacturing than do crystalline materials. Room-temperature production would remove the need for large furnaces, saving energy and allowing more scalable fabrication techniques.

Although the article focuses on fabricating the thin films that make up OLEDs, the Physics Today editorial team wanted the cover to showcase the more relatable end product. Art director Freddie Pagani picked a photo of a floor-to-ceiling mosaic of curved screens that LG Electronics showcased in Berlin in 2019 at the Internationale Funkausstellung, one of the world’s leading consumer electronics trade shows. Pagani liked that the curvature of the screens can really be seen and that the reflection of the ceiling screens in the bottom half of the image draws you into the room. The vividness of the OLED display meant no adjustments were needed to make the colors pop on the cover.

To emphasize the technological angle, Pagani used the font Mashine; the font name evoking the glitter of technology was a bonus.