According to the Nikkei Asian Review, Konica Minolta and Pioneer are in talks to merge their OLED lighting business. According to the report, the two companies are finalizing the agreement, and will setup a new 50:50 joint venture in the spring.

Both companies are producing OLEDs, and the two production facilities will still be owned by the parent companies - but the OLED R&D and sales operations and will be spun-off to a new company.

The newest developments in OLED technology were eagerly anticipated at this year’s Light and Building show in Frankfurt. Could the latest technical advances and changes to the cost of panel manufacture finally allow the predicated breakthrough into the market?

Light and Building 2016 was host to four OLED Technology manufacturers, all demonstrating the capabilities of their products to an impressed audience.

Pioneer is demonstrating a very nice looking transparent OLED automotive brake system. The idea is to embed this unit in the vehicle's rear window - so it is transparent and allows for a greater field of view, but when you press the brakes it emits a bright red light:

The idea of embedding an OLED in the rear window is not new, but this is a nice implementation by Pioneer.

Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation Pioneer Corporation have developed a color-tunable and dimmable OLED lighting panel produced using Mitsubishi's wet-coating process. The companies say that this panel can be produced for less than one-third of the cost of OLEDs made with regular evaporation-based production methods.

Mitsubishi and Pioneer say that these panels will be mass produced in early 2016. They will make three panels, the OLE-P0505 (55x55 mm, active area 40x35 mm), the OLE-P0707 (69x69 mm, active area 54x51 mm) and the OLE-P0909 (92x92 mm, active area 76x76 mm). All three panels are 1.08 mm thick and feature a max luminance of 2,000 cd/m² and a color temperature of 3000K to 5000K. The panels will be distributed by MC Pioneer OLED Lighting Corporation.

Mitsubishi Chemical and Pioneer announced that they developed a bluelight-less OLED lighting panel. The OLE-P0909-C3S module which contains this panel is actually already shipping, and it is produced using the wet-coating process developed by the two Japanese companies.

The new panel emits a minimal portion of blue light - less than 1% of the amount emitted by Mitsubishi and Pioneer's regular 3000K OLED panel. The panel is a candle-color type - with a 1900K color temperature. The module size is 92.4x92.4 mm (active area 76x76 mm) and is 4.3 mm thick. The maximum luminance is 3,000 cd/m².

In early 2014, Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical announced that they began to mass produce OLED lighting modules made with a "wet coating system". Soluble OLED processes should offer a great production cost reduction - but Mitsubishi's panel suffered from limited lifetime (15,000 hours).

According to a new report from Japan, Mitsubishi managed to double the lifetime, and their newest panels offer 30,000 hours. This was achieved by new longer-lasing OLED materials and a different device structure. Mitsubishi already shipped panel samples to lighting equipment makers and will setup up their marketing effort soon via their Pioneer JV (MC Pioneer OLED Lighting).

A few days ago Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical announced that they began to mass produce OLED lighting modules made with a "wet coating system". The two Japanese companies estimated that the new process will reduce the cost of the OLED panel by 90% compared to the current production method.

Today I found this nice video showing two new OLED luminaries (the Wireframe and the Magic Tiles Nine) designed by Ely Rozenberg and Mauro Del Santo. This project was organized by Pioneer, Mitsubishi and +ISO and those are apparently the first lamps to use Pioneer's new printed OLED panels.

Pioneer announced that they began to mass produce OLED lighting modules made with a "wet coating system". The production technology was co-developed by Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical. The panels will be distributed by MC Pioneer OLED Lighting Corporation.

The two companies currently produce a single module that is 92.4 x 92.4 mm in size (active area 76x76 mm) and 4.3 mm thick. It weighs 42 grams. The color temperature is 2870K and the maximum luminance is 3,000 cd/m². Unfortunately they did not reveal the efficiency and lifetime of this OLED.

In October 2013 Mitsubishi Chemical and Pioneer announced that they plan to start producing printed OLED lighting panels in 2014. Now Verbatim announced that it will bring an OLED panel produced using a "web coating process" to the Light + Building exhibition in April. Verbatim will also demonstrate a flexible OLED lighting panel for the first time.

We don't have any more information regarding Verbatim's new panels. In October 2013, however, Pioneer and Mitsubishi said that their panels use coating only for the bottom layer, while the emissive and top layers are deposited using VTE.

Mitsubishi Chemical and Pioneer have been jointly developing OLED lighting technologies for a long time, including printed OLED panels. The companies are currently producing OLED lighting panels in which the bottom layer is coated and the emissive layer and the top layers are deposited by evaporation in vacuum (VTE).

Now the two companies presented a prototype panel in which both the bottom layer and the emissive layer were coated (the top layer was still deposited using VTE). The companies say this new process will reduce the cost of the panel to 10% compared to current OLEDs due to improved material utilization. They also say that the new panels will feature much longer lifetimes.