Lumiotec released an interesting article that discusses the company's Multi-Photon Emission (MPE) stacked device structure and how it helps to achieve high luminance and long lifetime, their light out-coupling and encapsulation technologies and the company's mass production process. The paper also includes a discussion on the development of their next generation panel which uses phosphorescent materials provided by Universal Display Corporation to improve the efficiency.

Here's our own review of Lumiotec's Hanger and Vanity OLED lamps, and here's our review of the company's first-gen OLED lighting panel. Here are a couple of videos showing Lumiotec's panels and lamps:

Lumiotec signed a new OLED technology license agreement with Universal Display - and will integrate UDC's technology and materials into their OLED lighting products. Lumiotec will pay license fees and running royalties to UDC, and the term of the agreement runs through December 31, 2015.

Lumiotec OLED lamps

Lumiotec says that they will start delivering sample panels next month (February 2012) - mainly 145x145 mm square panels - with warm white color and 40 lm/W efficiency. The company will start mass production these panels by April. Lumiotec also says that they are developing high-efficient natural white panels - and these will be released sometime during 2012.

Back in June, Lumiotec announced a couple of new OLED lamps: the Vanity desk lamp and the world's cheapest OLED lamp, the $450 Hanger. Both use a single square OLED panel (we reviewed a previous generation panel back in September 2010). They were kind enough to send both lamps for a review, and after a few weeks of dealings with the Israeli customs, the lamps finally arrived and here's my review.

Both lamps use Lumiotec's Version-2 square OLED panels (14.5 x 14.5 mm active area) which feature a color temperature of 4,900K and a maximum luminance of 2,700 cd/m2. The panels are not very efficient at 10.5 lm/W (they use all-fluorscent OLEDs). The Hanger consumes 12 W while the Vanity consumes 13 W (the extra Watt is because of the electric touch sensor, more on this below). Here's our hands-on review of Lumiotec's Version-1 panels.

Blackbody announced their new Smart OLED lamp family back in September 2011, and they kindly sent us a V-LUX OLED desk lamp for a review. The V-LUX is an OLED desk lamp with two long rectangular OLED panels, designed by Bertrand's ID Medas. The V-LUX comes in 4 colors - gray, red, black and white - they sent me the black one.

Each OLED panel is 100 cm² in size, has a color rendering index of 80 and a color temperature of 3200K. The V-LUX consumes 2.8 W and its size is 35 (H) x 25 (W) x 46 (L) cm. The price is €572.

Lumiotec announced it will start selling two OLED lamps in September 1st - in Japan, Europe and other countries. The first one is the Hanger - a portable lamp that comes in several colors (red, white, yellow, blue, yellow-green, pink, purple and silver) and has a really cool design:

The Hanger uses Lumiotec's 14.5x14.5 Square white OLED panels (here's our Hands on review of the first generation version of these panels). The OLED features a color temperature of 4,900K, maximum luminance of 2,700cd/m² and it consumes 9.5W. The price of the Hanger (including the controller, dimmer switch and AC/DC adapter) is ¥35,000 (or about $450) which makes it the cheapest OLED lamp available.

Lumiotec sent us some interesting updates today. First of all, the company is already producing and shipping their second generation panels. They call these the 'standard' panels, or Version 2.0. The older panels (like the one we reviewed a while back) is referred to as 'pre series' or Version 1.0. The new panels offer better efficiency and lifetime and come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. They also cost a lot less then the first version - ranging from €115 to €350 (so the large square is down from around €700 to €260!). You can see Lumiotec's updated datasheet here.

A while back we reported that Rohm developed a new OLED lighting panel that uses a red phosphorescent material - which results in a much more efficient panel (25-30lm/W). We assumed that Lumiotec's Version 2.0 panels use Rohm's new panels - but sadly this is not the case. The Ver 2.0 are still all fluorescent, and the efficiency is just a little over 10.5lm/W. Lumiotec says that they consider phosphorescent materials a must for efficient panels and they do plan to go down that route in the future.

Japan's OLED lighting fair started in March 8th, and we got some interesting OLED Lighting news. NEC lighting is showing several OLED lighting lamps using their upcoming panels - which will be 10x10cm ones offering 60lm/W efficiency - which is actually very good. The company plans to commercialize them in fiscal 2011 (which ends of March 2012). NEC is using UDC's PHOLED materials, which explains the relativly high efficiency.

NEC OLED lighting

Panasonic Electric Works is another company that's developing OLED lighting panels based on UDC's materials, and now we hear that they too plan to commercialize their panels in 2011. We don't have any technical details on those panels yet.

Rohm developed a new (2nd-generation) OLED lighting panel that uses a red phosphorescent material. The new material results in a more efficient device - about
25-30lm/W, up from about 11lm/W in their first-generation all-fluorescent device.

Lumiotec (which is partly owned by Rohm) will start producing these new panels in "volume" within a few days (Lumiotec reported earlier that it will make around 60,000 panels a year). The new panel's size is 145x145mm (the same size of Lumiotec's older panels) and will cost ¥30,000 (about $365) - which is cheaper than Lumiotec's first-gen panels (the whole development kit used to cost The kit costs ¥84,000 - about $930). Lumiotec will also introduce other shapes and sizes. Here's our review of Lumiotec's older OLED Lighting panels.

Lumiotec announced today that they will begin mass production of OLED Lighting panels in January 2011. The production capacity will be around 60,000 panels a year, and the company will offer panels in five different shapes (two squares and three rectangular) and in two different colors: lamp (3000K) and natural white (5000K). Selling 60,000 panels a year means that most of these will go into commercial lamps, and not just 'sample designs'.

Lumiotec has started shipping sample panels back in February 2010 (here's our hands-on review) - and the new panels will be thinner, lighter and cheaper. In fact thickness and weight have been halved (all the panels are 2.1mm thick), and the price for the large square panel (145x145mm) will be 30,000 yen (around $360) - less than half of the price of the sample panel.

Lumiotec started shipping their OLED Lighting kits back in February 2010. We were finally able to get our hands on one, and here's our hands-on review. We have already reviewed the Philips Lumiblade and the OSRAM ORBEOS panels, and we'll compare them all in this review.