OLED white lighting

Interview with OLED100.eu's project manager

oled — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:31:03 -0400

The OLED100.eu project is a European 3-year OLED lighting project. The 30M$ project is a followup to the OLLA project, ended in June 2008, and it is lead by Philips, OSRAM, Siemens, Novaled and the Franhofer IPMS.

Dr. Stefan Grabowsky, the project's manager has been kind enough to talk to us, answer a few questions and give us more info on the project. Dr. Stefan has a Ph.D in Physics, from the University of Duisburg. In 2000 he joined Philips Research labs. He's working on OLEDs for several years now, with a focus on device physics and OLED stack development. Since September 2008 he is the project manager for OLED100.eu.

Q: Stefan, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Can you tell us a bit about OLED100.eu?
OLED100.eu is an European integrated research project that has brought together a consortium of experts from leading industry and academic organizations to accelerate the development of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technologies. It has received €12.5 million funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme to form the technological basis for efficient OLED applications for the general lighting industry in Europe.

Large-area OLED from Philips

GE to start printing OLED light panels next year

oled — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:29:14 -0400

EEtimes says that GE will start volume production of flexible OLED light panels in 2010. GE will print the OLEDs on polymer substrate, and use their ultra-high barrier coating. GE says that they managed to lower production cost by using roll-to-roll printing, and inexpensive substrates (the polymer ones).

GE are also thinking about possible new designs, and have released this video a month ago, which includes several flexible OLED light designs by art students, including wearable OLEDs for emergency safety gear, illuminated stairs, walls and signs in stores and a nice "wall peel" OLED lamp:

A new Japanese company formed to work on white OLED technology

oled — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:58:09 -0400

Junji Kido, a professor from the Yamagata University in Japan has formed a new company, called Organic Lighting, to work on white OLEDs. The company's capital is only about 130,000$ currently, and it was setup in the Yamagata Universit'yes Venture Business Laboratory.

Organic Lighting plans to have equipment on the market by the beginning of 2010. It will not have its own factory. They also have plans for OLED emergency lights for public places. They hope to reach several tens of millions of US$ in revenue by 2014.

Professor Junji Kido is the inventor of the first white OLED.

Via iStockAnalyst

Introduction to Quantum Dots, interview with QD Vision's CTO

oled — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:02:19 -0400

Quantum Dots are getting a lot of attention lately, especially as a new SSL lighting technology. One of the companies that is working on this new tech is QD Vision. Their co-founder and CTO, Seth Coe-Sullivan has agreed to explain the technology, introduce the company, and answer a few questions.

Seth received his Ph.D in electrical engineering from MIT in 2005, writing a thesis on incorporating quantum dots in hybrid organic/inorganic LED structure. That's the technology basis of QD Vision. Seth was chosen as one of the top young entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by BusinessWeek.

QD Vision is a quantum-dot product company that delivers highly differentiated lighting solutions to major industries where color, power and design matter - these include lighting, displays, signage and defense. QD Vision’s Quantum Light™ platform enables step-change advances over other display and lighting solutions such as LCDs, plasma displays, LEDs and even organic LEDs (OLEDs). QD Vision is privately held, based in MA, US, and has several first-tier patents originating at MIT.

Q: Hello Seth, and thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Can you explain your technology? What exactly *are* quantum dots?
Quantum dots are tiny bits of semiconductor crystals with amazing optical properties that are determined not only by their material composition, but their size. QD Vision synthesizes these materials in solution, and formulates them into inks and films that we sell to our customers, enabling step-change performance and cost benefits. Our first products are Quantum Light^TM optics for solid state lighting devices, and our customers offer the most efficient, highest color quality LED lighting solutions on the market today.

Samsung joins OLED lighting race, shows prototypes

oled — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:21:05 -0400

It turns out that Samsung (SMD) have started to develop OLED lighting modules. They have already shown a prototype at SID.

SMD showed two 200mmx200mm panels, and seven smaller panels (150mmx50mm). This is interesting, as Samsung are the leaders in AMOLED displays, and they will face a tough battle in OLED lighting from companies such as OSRAM, GE, Philips and others...

Via OLEDNet

Kodak OLED lighting video

oled — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:29:03 -0400

Kodak has kindly sent us a new video showing their new OLED lighting panels (preceded by some Kodak 'ads'). Kodak are still working on the technical issues of their OLEDs, but they are also seeking potential collaboration with other companies to bring these to market.

Just a few days ago Kodak received a 1.7M$ project from the US Department of Energy to develop OLED lighting - 15cmx15cm panels with over 50lm/W efficiency and over 20,000h lifetime.

More info about Kodak's white lighting project

oled — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:18:26 -0400

Yesterday we reported that Kodak got a 1.7M$ two-year contact from the DOE to develop key technologies and processes for OLED lighting panels. There wasn't much information in the original PR, so we got Kodak to explain it a bit for us, and here's what they say:

"The object of the proposed project is to construct OLED lighting panels with efficacy (> 50 lm/W) and lifetime (>20,000 h) superior to most of the current commercially available luminaires. The lighting panels will be constructed of 15 cm x 15 cm lighting tiles that can be used to build lighting panels of different sizes and shapes. The architecture is based on small molecule OLED and comprises four key technology components that enable this achievement: internal light extraction-enhancement structure, low voltage design, stacked architecture, and fluorescent-phosphorescent hybrid emitters. The proposed project will focus on developing structures and processes suitable for high volume, low cost manufacturing (ie Kodak VIST technology) of these OLED lighting panels."

Kodak Awarded $1.7 Million U.S. DOE Contract to Develop OLED Lighting

oled — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:22:48 -0400

Eastman Kodak has been awarded a $1.7 million two-year contract by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to develop key technologies and processes for OLED lighting panels.

Kodak white light OLED prototype

During the Product Development phase of the Solid State Lighting project, Kodak will develop an OLED luminaire that meets Energy Star color and efficacy specifications and will address key areas of manufacturing processes to reduce cost. Kodak’s Vapor Injection Source Technology allows manufacturers to significantly reduce unit-manufacturing costs, with high manufacturing throughput and material utilization that initially exceeds 50%, and could be greater than 75% in future manufacturing applications.

The Holst centre releases a nice flexible OLED Lighting video

oled — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:54:20 -0400

The Holst centre has released a nice video about flexible OLED lighting. They show some nice concepts, and an interesting idea that you can 'cut your own OLED shape' - buy a square-panel OLED, and then cut it... as it will still work. They show this in the video.

Follow this link to the video.

Just last month, the Holst centre has shown an ITO-free, Printed Flexible OLED lighting, paving the way to low-cost large-size OLEDs.

ETRI shows new 70Lm/W white light OLEDs

oled — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:49:55 -0400

ETRI (South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) has developed a new white OLED, at 70lm/W. Korea wants to show that they aren't behind the US, Japan or the EU in this field, and in fact has closed the gap on OLED light tech. ETRI will help local companies to produce OLED lighting panels.

ETRI white light OLED prototype

The Koreans forecast that OLED lights will begin full-scale production around 2015, and start to replace other light sources.

Via Telecoms Korea