Clarivate, a scientific information and analysis company, provides an annual review of research that could lead its authors to the Nobel Prize, through a program called "Citation Leaders".
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In this program, experts analyze Web of Science data, looking for studies that thousands of researchers have relied on in subsequent work. They then combine these indicators with a qualitative assessment of the importance of the discoveries. When a study becomes a foundation upon which others build, it provides evidence of its author's influence on the course of science.
Since the program began in 2002, 89 scientists selected by Clarivate have subsequently won Nobel Prizes, according to the foundation's announcement in September 2026.
However, the list is not an official nomination, and it does not guarantee winning in a particular year, as years may pass between the researcher being selected and receiving the award.
Ahead of the Nobel Prize in Physics announcement on October 6, this year's list includes 5 names, whose achievements are spread across 3 fields that touch on the future of screens, computers and electronics.
The first prediction starts on your phone screen, with Chihaya Adachi, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Research Center for Photonics and Organic Electronics at Kyushu University in Japan, Stephen Forrest, Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan in the United States, and Mark Thompson, Professor of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California.
According to the organization, they are meeting around research that has improved the efficiency of organic light-emitting diodes, known as OLEDs, the technology used in many phone and television screens.
Inside these devices, electricity passes through thin organic layers, pushing its molecules into states that possess additional energy, which can be released as light.
Forrest, Thompson and their colleagues helped overcome this limitation by developing phosphorescent materials containing heavy metals, which allow the exploitation of states that were being lost, to the point of theoretically benefiting from all states of excitation.
Adachi developed another pathway called "thermally activated delayed fluorescence," in which molecules use a small amount of thermal energy to return the locked states to a pathway that allows light to be emitted, without the need for those metals. The intention here is to efficiently exploit the excitations, not to convert all the device's electricity into light that reaches the eye.
Their claim to the prize lies in their transformation of a precise understanding of quantum behavior within molecules into a wide-ranging technology. This work has enabled more efficient displays and paved the way for reduced energy consumption and reliance on rare metals. Thus, their achievement extends from a fundamental question about energy transfer within matter to devices people use every day.
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