OLED light bulbs, OLED lighting

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:

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

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.

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 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.