Project TOPLESS (Thin Organic Polymeric Light Emitting Semi-conductor Surfaces) is a three year £3.3M project, sponsored by the UK government (50%). It comprises a consortium of Thorn Lighting (UK largest lighting company), Sumation UK and the University of Durham (Department of Physics and Chemistry).
The aim of the project is to product a high quality white light generating single polymer, and efficient large area single pixel device architectures.
TOPLESS objectives:
- An efficacy of 20Lm per watt
- Colour temperature suitable for general white light applications (this varies according to customer requirements) between 2,700K to 17,000K.
- Large single pixel devices (no buzz bars)
- Minimal number of organic layers
TOPLESS will run till February 2010. In June 2008 we interviewed Dr. Geoff Williams, the project manager.
In December 2008, TOPLESS showed a prototype lamp. The efficiency is about 17Lm/W (as there is no out-coupling. With out-coupling the efficiency is over 30Lm/W), each panel operating at 3W. The panels are just 0.7mm thick, made by Sumation with TOPLESS materials
