Research / IP companies

Japanese Organic Lighting was formed by Junji Kido, a professor from the Yamagata University (he invented the first white OLED) 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.

ModisTech is a Korean company focusing on OLED displays and lighting R&D, and also consluting services. 

ModisTech's web site

The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (Fraunhofer IPMS) has over 200 employees, doing research in electronic, mechanical and optical components and their integration into devices and systems.

Franhofer have been working on OLED since 2000, and are now organized under the name Center for Organic Materials and Electronics Devices Dresden (COMEDD). COMEDD's aim is to do not only research, but also pilot fabrication. More on COMEDD Here. Fraunhofer are researching several OLED projectors, including bi-directional OLEDs, OLED based pico projectors, and more.

In January 2009 we interviewed Prof. Karl Leo, Institute Director of the Fraunhofer IPMS.

Fraunhofer IPMS's web page

COMEDD is the Center for Organic Materials and Electronic Devices, based in Dresden. In COMEDD, they try to combine the know-how of the Fraunhofer IPMS and production infrastructure.

The aim of the center is to carry out customer and application specific research, development and pilot fabrication of novel device concepts, and manufacturing methods in the field of vacuum-processed organic materials, with a technology focus on semiconducting organic materials (small molecules).

The activities cover three main application areas, organic based lighting and signage technology, organic solar cell technology, and OLED-on-CMOS applications.

COMEDD offers research and developments on innovative fabrication equipment based on three fabrication lines: a rigid substrate fabrication line (370x470 mm² substrates) for lighting and organic solar cell applications, an OLED-on-CMOS line on 200mm wafer size and a roll-to-roll prototype line for flexible substrates. Based on this infrastructure COMEDD can offer product developments starting with the system concept till pilot fabrication level.

COMEDD's web page

Lumicure is an early stage, privately held company, based in Dundee, Scotland, developing low cost, portable (ambulatory) and disposable light sources which will be used extensively in Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and cosmetic skin treatment. The light sources are based on OLEDs.

Lumicure secured 5M$ in funding in early 2009, and hope to get their product on the market by Q4 2009, according to an interview we did with their CEO.

Lumicure's web site

Royal Philips Electronics is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest. It is involved in many areas, and one of the world's leaders in lighting. Philips is working on OLED lighting (including transparent panels, flexible panels, and color-tunable ones), aiming to have products ready by 2009 under the lumiblade brand. It is also involved in sevaral european lighting projects. 

You can actually order samples of their OLED lighting panels on line. Philips has sent us a couple of panels for review in May 2009.

Lumiblade's web page

Holst Centre was setup in 2005 by IMEC (Belgium) and TNO (Holland), with government support. The centre is located in Eindhoven, and has over 100 employees (planned to grow to 200 by 2010) and over 15 industrial partners. 

The centre is an independent R&D operation that develops generic technologies for Wireless Autonomous Transducer Solutions and for Systems-in-Foil. One of the programs in the Holst Cenre is ‘Printed Organic Lighting and Signage’ - develops device designs for OLED lighting and signage applications, compatible with roll-to-roll (R2R) processing. More info on the OLED program can be found here.

Holst Centre's web page

Lumiotec , located at Yonezawa City, Japan, was formed in May 2008 by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, ROHM, Toppan Printing and Mitsui to check the viability of OLED panels for lighting, and to manufacture and sell the panels.

In March 2009 Lumiotec showed some OLED lighting prototypes.

Press release about Lumiotec's establishment

Organic Lighting Technologies focuses on a product that exploits OLED technology for application to LCD backlight, especially small area LCDs like that used in cell phone and digital cameras. The product is ‘Alqalight’ which is an OLED backlight.

OLT's web site 

Sumitomo Chemical has been established in 1913, and since then has been researching and producing industrial chemicals and materials. Sumitomo has been working with CDT on PLED materials, and has acquired the company in July 2007.

Sumitomo plans to produce OLED TVs, and have teamed up with Panasonic to make 40" and larger sets by 2010.

Sumitomo's web site