IP Portfolio holder IPValue Management acquired over 1,200 patents and applications from Mitsubishi Electric's display business unit. The IP, a result of over two decades of R&D, encompasses a wide range of LCD, OLED and other technologies.
The patents will now be owned by IPValue's subsidiary, Trivale Technologies. The financial terms of this agreement were not disclosed.
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).
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, in collaboration with Okamura and Taisei, developed an OLED desk lamp for offices. Taisei is constructing a Net-Zero Energy Building (ZEB) in Yokohama, and the OLED lamps will be installed in this building for testing.
The Japanese government has called for new public buildings to be ZEB-compliant by 2020. Lighting takes up about 20% of the electricity in offices so it is a key target for energy saving efforts.
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.
Mitsubishi Electric demonstrated a new OLED lamp that supports the regular E26 ("medium") incandescent socket. This is not the best design for an OLED of course, but Mitsubishi says that one day such a design may be used to replace regular incandescent, CFL or LED lamps.
The OLED is 16x16 cm in size (8 mm thick). Mitsubishi did not reveal any specification on the panel - only that the OLED itself wasn't actually produced by Mitsubishi Electric. The lamp can be rotated independently from the base - so you can change the angle (or rotation) after you screwed the lamp in (this is because the OLED isn't round like normal incandescent or CFL lamps).
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.
