OLED white lighting

Osram will exhibit a large room filled with Orbeos OLED Lighting panels. This installation was planned under the direction of Professor Andreas Schulz together with his team of the renowned lighting design office 'LichtKunstLicht'. The OLED panels 'float' in the room, in the walls, ceiling and floor. Visitors can enter the room and walk through this installation. 

The installation will be on show in the Light+Building exhibition in Frankfurt (April 11-16). Osram's Orbeos panels are round (88mm diameter), 2.1mm thick and weight 24g each (the efficiency is 25lm/W). The panels are available now on-line.

LG Group has decided on four R&D technologies to focus on: lighting, solar cells, next-gen batteries and integrated heating/ventilation/air-condition systems. The lighting technologies will include LED lighting and OLED Lighting materials, developed by LG Chem. LG Chem have already announced their plans to develop OLED lighting materials and panels, and hope to start production in 2H 2010.

Back in January, LG announced that they will spend most R&D money on consumer electronics, wireless communication and next-gen displays (OLEDs, 3D panels and e-paper displays).

Via KoreaHerald

Technocorp Energy (formed by ex-Kodak employees) will license Kodak's OLED Lighting technology from LG. Technocorp plan is to produce efficient OLED panels (70lm/W) at $64/m². This will take time and a lot of effort of course, and the company is looking for funding, partners and joint-ventures to achieve this goal.

Via +PlasticElectronics

The OLED100.eu project has won the Best Energy Efficient project award in Europe's ICT (International Telecommunication Union) competition. They actually won it together with Beywatch (tools for environmental management and energy efficiency). Both project will get €10,000 (there were 39 candidates altogether). OLED100.eu have also send us a new photo of a large-area OLED panel (by Philips Research):

Large Area OLED Lighting

OLED100.eu is an integrated European research project to accelerate the development of OLED Lighting technologies. It received €12.5 million funding and focuses on five main goals:

• High power efficacy (100 lm/W)
• Long lifetime (100.000 h)
• Large area (100x100 cm2)
• Low-cost (100 Euro/m2)
• Measurement standardization / application research

Remember the Philips Mirrorwall? It's a wall made out of white Lumiblade OLED panels and a camera, and it basically acts as a mirror, display shadow reflections of people standing in front of it. It turns out that Philips are actually offering this limited-edition wall. The price? about 10-12K€ per m² (they'll made it just for you). That's one expensive mirror... But what a spectacular one!

If you want a cheaper option, you can also rent the whole thing for about 10K€ per week (excl. transport, insurance and approx. 3 man-days for installation and dismantling). I'm not sure how large the rented wall will be (in the video it seems rather big).

We've just got word from OSRAM, and it seems that they are happy with the ORBEOS OLED Lighting so far. Here's the official quote: "we have seen a very successfull start of our ORBEOS panel in November and we still see a high interest in this product".  

OSRAM ORBEUS OLED Lighting panel

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors has released the ORBEOS back in November 2009. The panel has a round surface (88mm diameter), is only 2.1mm thick and weights 24g. The efficiency is 25lm/W. The panels are actually available now via OSRAM's site.

Korea's Modistech is working on flexible OLED Lighting for indirect applications for quite some time, and are now planning to commercialize the technology in 2010. They will produce 150x150mm flexible OLED panels. Back in 2009, Modistech said they plan to do so in 2011, so apparently they are ahead of schedule.

Modistech's slogan for the displays is 'paper-like, fabric-like and film-like'. They say that they will change the paradigm of lighting from 'to install' to 'to attach'. They want to use OLEDs as indirect lighting which does not require high luminance, and is suitable for the flexible OLEDs. It can be used in furniture, kitchenware, airplanes and especially automobiles (make up light, glove box light, foot light and trunk light).

Modistech say that their technology minimizes the number of substrate processes and is using roll-to-roll deposition and self-developed encapsulation material. They claim that they reduce the manufacturing cost by up to 90%!.

Via FocusOn

A few weeks ago we reported that Lumiotec will start selling OLED Lighting panel dev kits, and today they have indeed opened their online store. The store only accepts Japanese orders currently. 

The development kits (pictured above) include one 145mm x 145mm OLED panel, a controller and an AC adapter. They cost ¥84,000 each (about $930) a little higher than what they said a couple of weeks ago.

The panel is 4.1mm thick (the thickest part is 4.8mm). The light emitting area is 125mm x 125mm. It weights 195g, the average color rendering index is Ra80, and the maximum brightness is  4,000 cd / m². The lifetime is quoted at 30,000 hours (at 1,000 cd / m² brightness level)

A group of ex-Kodak employees, who left the company following Kodak's OLED business acquisition by LG in December 2010 has formed a new company, called TechnoCorp Energy. The company (based in New York, US) will work on OLED Lighting, and has already given seed funding. It's not clear yet whether they will use Kodak's OLED Lighting IP, which was bought by LG as part of the acquisition.

In the company's web site, they do not actually mention OLEDs, but rather say they will work on a 'select set of renewable energy projects and working these projects in tandem'.

Via PlusPlasticElectronics

Earlier today we got word that Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical will jointly develop OLED Lighting. Now we have some more information. Pioneer will be the one to actually make the panels, and Mitsubishi will sell them across Verbatim's worldwide sales network. The plan is to start mass production in 2011, with a sales target of $335 million in 2015 and $1.1 billion in 2020. 

The two companies are currently researching OLED lighting panels that use printable hole injecting material (HIM) and new emitting materials, and  will also research printable OLED lighting development and commercialization. Mitsubishi plans to start early stage mass production and marketing of new printable emitting materials, which probably the PHOLED materials developed together with UDC.

We'll be able to view their first prototype (a dimmable/tone adjustable OLED panel, which Mitsubishi say it's the world's first) at the Light+Building exhibition, April 11-16 Frankfurt, Germany.

Via Twice