Japan's Kaneka say that their OLED Lighting panels are ready to be shipped. If someone places an order, they can be mass produced. Kaneka has been working on OLED Lighting since April 2008, and originally planned to have a 3-year research project. They now say they decided to commercialize the technology even before the research project is finished.

Kaneka offers three OLED panels. The first is a daylight color panel (6000K) with a maximum brightness of 5,000cd/m² and a lifetime of 15,000 hours (when the initial brightness is 1,000cd/m²). The second panel has a warm-white (3000K), 5,000cd/m² maximum brightness and a lifetime of 10,000 hours. The third panel is red with 2,000cd/m² max brightness and lifetime of 5,000 hours.

A sony rep is talking about their new PVM-740 profession monitor with the 7.4" (960x540) OLED panel.

The Holst Centre and NeoDec will partner on metallic inks for flexible electronics. NeoDec's conductive ink technology is a complementary technology to the competences of Holst Centre and its industrial
partners and opens new routes to enable roll-to-roll manufacturing of flexible electronic devices such as OLED lighting foils. The partnership will initially run for 2 years, and NeoDec's technology will be further developed within the Holst Centre.

Printed structures from the Holst Centre

According to a new research by Cintelliq, there's an "explosive growth" in OLED Lighting patents since 2000. 90% of the patents has appeared since 2000. One of the driving factors has been increased government funding. The new study identifies over 1,800 white OLED patents (EP, JP, US, and WO).

Samsung has started shipping the W9600 projector phone in Korea. The phone has a 3.3" touch WVGA AMOLED, and also sports a DLP pico-projector (capable of 854x480 WVGA image at 15 lumens brightness).

Samsung W9600

We do not know the price of this new phone yet.

Sony has announced two new viewfinders for studio and portable cameras, the HDVFEL70 and HDVFEL75. Both use the new 7.4" OLED panels that we heard about yesterday. We don't have any photos, and not a lot of details beside this short feature list which is identical for both products:

• Wide viewing angle
• Focus assist function
• Waveform monitoring function
• Assignable SW for flexible operation

Dupont announced new silver conductive inks for printed electronics, which can be used for OLEDs and touch screens. The new screen printable inks include: DuPont 7723, a low temperature firing silver ink suitable for printing on glass, and DuPont
9169, a low temperature curing Ag ink designed for flexible substrates.

The 7723 ink delivers excellent adhesion to Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) coated glass, it is lead-free and solderable, ideal for use in Touch Screen devices. The 9169 has extremely high conductivity, strong adhesion to ITO coated flexible substrates, low contact resistance to ITO, and fine line capability. Both products are recommended where high performance on coated substrates is critical, such as in Touch Screens and OLEDs.

We just learned that TVLogic has unveiled a new professional 3D monitor - the TDM-150W. It uses a 15" AMOLED panel, which is the same one as used in LG's EL9500 OLED TV (it has the same specs: 1366x768 and 100,000:1 contras ratio). It's great to hear that LG are also offering the 15" panel for other products.

VLogic TDM-150W

Back in January, we posted that "3D might be the killer application for OLEDs". It's great to see the first actual 3D OLED product. Both Sony and Samsung have shown 3D OLED prototypes back in CES 2010. OLEDs are great for 3D viewing - fast response time (important for active-shutter 3D), great contrast and a large viewing angle.

Sony has just announced a new professional monitor, the PVM-740. It has a 7.4" OLED panel that supports 960x540 resolution. In their press-release, Sony say that the OLED monitor is using their "unique Super Top Emission technology to efficiently deliver superb high contrast, high color images, even in ambient light".

Sony PVM-740

As we're not aware of any other OLED maker that produces a 7.4" display, is Sony producing this particular panel? Perhaps they are using the production lines that used to make the 11" XEL-1 OLED TV.

The kind folks over at Osram has sent us one of their new ORBEOS OLED Lighting panel for a review. The ORBEOS is a round (88mm diameter) glass panel that's only 2.1mm thick (it weights 24g). The efficiency is 25lm/W. The brightness of the panels is 1,000cd/m² with power input of less than a watt, and they should last around 5,000 hours. The panels are available now via OSRAM's
site, they cost €240 each. The panels were actually released back in November 2009, and OSRAM say that they are happy with the sales and interest so far.

OSRAM ORBEOS

Read on to see my impressions of this OLED panel, and how it compares to Philips' Lumiblade panels which were the first available OLED panels...