Earlier today we reported that  The University of Rochester received a $1.2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop host materials for white phosphorescent OLEDs. This funding is part of the DOE's Recovery Act Rewards, and now we have found the complete list, which contains several OLED Lighting projects:

• Cambrios got $1.2 million (out of $1.8 for the total project) for "Solution-Processable Transparent Conductive Hole Injection Electrode OLED SSL". This project seeks to develop a cost-effective replacement for indium tin oxide for use as an electrode in OLED lighting devices. Indium is both rare and very expensive. 
• The University of Rocherser got $1.2 million (out of $1.3 million) for "Development and Utilization of Host Materials for White Phosphorescent OLEDs". This project seeks to produce white OLEDs with > 100 lm/W efficiency after light extraction enhancement and > 10,000 hour operating time, by making a new class of emissive materials.
• PPG Industries got $1.6 million (out of $2.1 million) for "Low-Cost Integrated Substrate for OLED Lighting". PPG Industries plans to develop a new low-cost integrated substrate product that is suitable for OLED lighting manufacture and is compatible with PPG’s existing flat-glass and transparent-glass coating technologies and high-volume glass manufacturing methods.
• GE Global Research got $4 million (out of $8 million) for "Roll-to-Roll Solution-Processable Small-Molecule OLEDs". This project seeks to upgrade GE’s prepilot OLED roll-to-roll manufacturing line through improved high-performance phosphorescent small-molecule OLED materials, advanced OLED device architectures, plastic ultra-high barrier films, and an advanced encapsulation scheme.
• UDC got $4 million (out of $8.3 million) for "Creation of a U.S. Phosphorescent OLED Lighting Panel Manufacturing Facility". This project seeks to design and set up two pilot phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) manufacturing lines. The team will implement UDC's PHOLED technology and provide prototype lighting panels to U.S. luminaire manufacturers to incorporate into products, to facilitate testing of design, and to gauge customer acceptance.

Interestingly, two of these project (the GE and UDC ones) involves actual OLED Lighting panels pilot production lines - which could lead to actual OLED products being commercially available.

GE and Israel's Power Paper will jointly-develop self-powered (battery) OLED Lighting. The project will combine Power Paper's paper-thin, flexible batteries with GE's OLEDs.

GE says that the new OLED products will cost less, be more effective and will be reliable and shock-resistant.

Konica Minolta lays out its OLED Lighting plan:

• Launch OLED lighting equipment by March 2011
• Build a large-scale OLED lighting plant by march 2014
• Get over 100 billion yen (about $1 billion) in sales by 2017/18

The company will spend around 3.5 billion yen ($38 million) to build an initial production line by the end of 2010, in order to launch products by March 2011. The line will use roll-to-roll production method. The mass-production line planned for 2014 will require at least 10 billion yen ($110 million) to build.

Konica Minolta is working towards OLEDs together with GE and UDC.

Lumiotec is showing new OLED lighting panels. Lumiotec has equipment for developing 300x300 mm OLED panels (although the ones on show are 142x142mm). The panels are 3.5mm thick with a 3800k-4000k color temperature.

Lumiotec plans to begin mass-production in January 2010, which is great news. The company is in contact with the big 3 lighting companies - OSRAM, Philis and GE (all of them has independent OLED Lighting programs).

GE is working since 2003 on roll-to-roll OLED printing (of flexible and transparent OLED lighting panels). Dr Yan from GE says that in 2007, they had fairly high defects, around 65% yield. Today GE says that their yield is between 90%-95%.

One of the biggest issues GE is tackling is the flexible barrier layer to protect the OLED devices. GE has developed an "Ultra High Barrier" (UHB) by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The performance that has been achieved is low 10-5g/m2/day, with good transparency and adhesion.

Dr Yan says that roll-to-roll organic printing is real, and OLED lighting is getting closer. OLEDs are still around 15 times more expansive than conventional lighting, but the price will drop in time, and OLEDs will get cheaper than LEDs because of roll-to-roll printing and potentially cheaper materials.

IDTechEx believes that it will take between 5 to 10 years for OLEDs to become cost effective. But even before that OLEDs can be used in high-value products and niches.

Konica Minolta is launching an online OLED lighting ad campaign (ads were spotted in CNN video, for example). Konica Minolta is working on Phosphorescent OLED lighting, together with UDC and GE. They have plans to release their first products by 2011. It seems like OLED lighting is heating up (unlike the OLED panels), especially since Philips has started shipping samples, and I guess KM also wants to make an early impact, and hopefully we'll hear more from them soon. Perhaps they also plan an "early launch" of samples, like Philips.

KM says that OLED lighting will "change our world", it's the biggest invention in lighting since Edison, and focus on the environmental bonuses and design possibilities. KM also seems to working on flexible or curved OLEDs, or at least they list these as some of OLED's advantages.

Curvlinear OLED lighting vessel concept

They also sponsor several artists, envisioning the future of OLED lighting. Currently there's just one concept from Seifert Stoeckmann, with their "curvilinear light vessel" concept, seen above (more photos and explanation available at KM's site). Their idea is to enable gently curving objects - which might be small "palm" sized objects to giant UFO-like outdoor pieces (shown above).

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.

GE has produced a nice video showing all sorts of design concepts using thin, flexible OLED lighting panels. There's wearable OLEDs for emergency safety gear, illuminated stairs, walls and signs in stores and a nice "wall peel" OLED lamp:

GE are working towards roll-to-roll printing of OLEDs, and are planning to introduce OLED lighting products by 2010.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced its selection for solid-state lighting funding opportunities. A total of fourteen projects were chosen, six of which are OLED related.

QD Vision: Quantum Dot Light Enhancement Substrate for OLED Solid-State Lighting
Summary: This project seeks to develop and demonstrate a cost-competitive solution for realizing increased extraction efficiency organic light emitting devices (OLEDs) with efficient and stable color rendering index (CRI) for SSL. Solution processible quantum dot (QD) films will be utilized to generate tunable white emission from blue emitting phosphorescent OLED (Ph-OLED) devices.

The research team at GE has put together a cool OLED christmas tree. The OLEDs were made by a roll-to-roll fabrication. The OLED is 6 inch wide, by 15 feet. Here's a nice video of the tree:

Anit Duggal, who's leading GE OLED program said - We’re making great progress toward hitting the metrics needed to successfully introduce OLED lighting to market. We continue to make steady advances in efficiency, lifetime, and lighting-quality using device structures that can be made with roll-to-roll manufacturing, so that we’ll be able to introduce OLED lighting at an affordable price.

We also got a nice high resolution picture of the tree: