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.

Pioneer and Mitsubishi established a new company called MC Pioneer OLED Lighting (MPOL). The new company (jointly owned 50:50) will handle OLED lighting marketing and sales in Japan. MPOL offers Verbatim's Velve color-tunable OLED lighting panels (jointly made by Mitsubishi and Pioneer).

MPOL has a nice website (in Japanese, though) that shows nice photos of the latest Velve installations such as the Issey Miyake store at Tokyo's JP Tower and the Kaiteki Cafe in Tokyo.

Gazprom Dobycha Noyabrsk installed a 5.4 x 3.4 meter Diamond Vision OLED installation (Mitsubishi's tiled-PMOLED display) in their headquarters in Siberia, Russia. The display consists of 112 PMOLED modules (128 x 128 pixels each) in a 14 x 8 configuration to achieve a 1792 x 1024 resolution. The installer was Avilex.

This is the fourth Diamond Vision OLED installation we're aware of. The first one was in Merck's Material Research Center in Darmstadt, Germany. Merck's display measures 3.84 x 2.3 m with a 1280 x 768 resolution. The second installation is the Geo-Cosmos six-meter OLED globe at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo, Japan. This installation uses smaller modules (32x32) - in fact it uses 10,362 such modules to achieve more than 10 million pixels.

Verbatim sent us information about two new OLED lighting installations that use their 2nd-gen Velve color-tunable panels. The first one is in the Kaiteki Cafe in Tokyo:

Verbatim installed 28 OLED panels in the wall mounted mosaic, and there are also 12 units integrated into a table. Those table-integrated modules are controlled (dimming and color) by an iPad:

The Issey Miyake store at Tokyo's JP Tower has installed 99 Velve OLED panels in their handbag section. The panels are all 7x7 cm in size. It's not clear by the photo and the PR, but I guess that these panels keep changing their color (the Velve panels are the only color-tunable panels available today).

I'm guessing those are Verbatim's 2nd-Gen panels (as their 3rd-Gen ones aren't in production yet as far as I know).

Verbatim announced their 3rd-Gen Velve color-tunable OLED lighting panels, and the company managed to increase the efficacy to 51.6 lm/W. The brightness is the same as in their 2nd-gen panels (2,000 cd/m²). The panels weigh 193 grams and the active area is 123x123 mm. In fact it seems to be exactly the same as their previous panels.

Verbatim did not reveal when the expect to release those panels and at what price. We don't have any technical details either, but it's likely that these are phosphorescent panels. The OLED is manufactured by Mitsubishui Chemical (Verbatim's parent company) in partnership with Pioneer. Back in June 2012 we posted a hands-on review of the first-gen Verbatim panels, here's a short video from that review:

Pioneer announced it has established a new OLED lighting subsidiary (called Pioneer OLED Lighting Devices). The new company will take over Pioneer's OLED development and production. Pioneer is collaborating with Mitsubishi and is already producing OLED lighting panels (sold under the Verbatim brand).

POLD was launched with a capital of ¥200 million (about $2.1 million). Pioneer says that this new subsidiary will allow them to strengthen their OLED lighting program - in preparation for the OLED lighting market launch in 2014.

Back in June Mitsubishi announced that they completed the installation of the 9.6 x 1.9 meters 160-degrees concave Diamond Vision OLED display at Narita Airport. This cool display (called Panorama Vision) ;is made from 2,000 96 x 96 mm PMOLED panels. Now we found this video showing this display in action:

This is Mitsubishi's third Diamond Vision OLED installation that we know about. The first one was a 3.84x2.3 meter display installed at Merck's research center and the second was the 6" Geo-Cosmos sphere installed at Tokyo's Science Museum.

Verbatim started shipping the Velve OLED lighting evaluation kit back in May 2011, and last month they sent us a unit for review. This is the world's first (and only) color-tunable OLED lighting panel, and it's pretty exciting.

Mitsubishi announced they completed the installation of Japan's largest digital signage system at Narita international airport in Tokyo (announced in October 2011). The system includes a 160-degrees concave Diamond Vision OLED display called Panorama Vision. This cool display measures 9.6 x 1.9 meters and is made from 2,000 96x96mm PMOLED panels.

This is Mitsubishi's third Diamond Vision OLED installation that we know about. The first one was a 3.84x2.3 meter display installed at Merck's research center and the second was the 6-meter Geo-Cosmos sphere installed at Tokyo's Science Museum.