OLED lighting developer OLEDWorks announced that was awarded with a new US federal SBIR grant to develop OLED technologies.

Under this new project, OLEDWorks will develop new OLED automotive taillights composed of multiple stacked layers of red and white OLEDs. This technology can also be applied to indoor lighting to provide greater efficiency, a broader intensity range, and the ability to communicate safety information.

OLED lighting developer OLEDWorks announced that it has developed a high-performance multi-stack OLED microdisplay technology. Next week at SID Displayweek OLEDWorks will present the technology, and results from 3, 4 and 5-stack microdisplay formulations.

OLEDWorks explains that it has realized its multi-stack OLED lighting technology - and the results are "exceptional". The company says that combined wit its unique and cost-effective manufacturing technology, microdisplays based on this new technology could combine high brightness, long lifetimes, exceptional power efficiencies - all at a low manufacturing cost.

The US National Shipbuilding Research Program (NSRP) awarded OLEDWorks and Acuity Brands $150,000 towards a marine lighting research project.

This is a follow-on projector to the earlier Low-Voltage Shipboard Lighting Feasibility Study project. This new 12-month project will refine shipboard configuration, optimize size & weight to maximize the inherent advantages of the OLED technology.

In August 2019 Audi announced a new OLED lighting technology, called Digital OLED, which uses multi-segment OLED taillight modules that can show signs and information - or just display new lighting designs. This is not a new idea, but it is interesting to see Audi's new take on it. Audi unveiled the technology at the ISAL19 trade-show:

The modules use 50 red OLED triangular panels that can be controlled like a dot-matrix display. The OLED panels were provided by OLEDWorks.

Audi is set to introduce a new OLED lighting technology they call Digital OLED which uses multi-segment OLED taillight modules that can show signs and information - or just display new lighting designs. This is not a new idea, but it is interesting to see Audi's new take on it.

The modules use 50 red OLED triangular panels that can be controlled like a dot-matrix display. Audi will showcase this new technology at the International Symposium on Automotive Lighting in September 23rd 2019.

OLED is an amazing technology for lighting - it creates beautiful, efficient and healthy light sources. OLED lighting has great promise but unfortunately the high price of production is a challenge that no one has managed to overcome and OLED lighting remains a small niche industry as of 2019.

In the early years, several large lighting makers (including GE, Philips, OSRAM, Panasonic, NEC and others) had active OLED lighting programs, but slowly almost all of these companies dropped out of the market - for various reasons - but the main one being that the large investments in large scale production are not certified to lead to market adoption and the competition with LED lighting is extremely difficult.

The United States Department of Energy (DoE) granted $1.05 million for OLEDWorks, allocated through the DoE's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The funds will be used to further improve efficiency and lower the costs of flexible OLED lighting panels, which will help reduce energy consumption while simultaneously providing healthier, unique lighting solutions that are cost competitive in the main stream lighting markets.

In November 2018 OLEDWorks announced that its first flexible OLED lighting panels are now commercially available. The OLEDWorks LumiCurve Wave are produced on Corning's 0.1mm thin Willow Glass flexible glass substrates. OLEDWorks says that the Wave panels are extremely thin and light and deliver the superb light quality and excellent color rendering that is uniquely achievable with OLED.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) has granted $1.1 million to Penn State University professors Chris Giebink and Michael Hickner for a new project to increase the efficiency of OLED lighting panels.

The researchers, collaborating with OLEDWorks in this project (and previous ones as well), aim to find a way to lower the refractive index of the organic materials which will increase the external efficiency of OLED devices. The basic idea is to insert other molecules and blend them with the existing OLED materials which lower the refractive index without adversely affecting the properties of the original molecules.

OLEDWorks announced a "predevelopment collaboration" with Audi to advance OLED lighting technology in automotive applications. Audi and OLEDWorks will work together to use OLED lighting and implement it in Audi's future vehicles.

Audi has been developing and implementing OLED lighting for many years. Back in 2012 Audi partnered with Philips to demonstrate several OLED lighting prototypes. Philips OLED unit was sold to OLEDWorks in 2015. See more about Audi's 2012 and 2013 OLED prototypes here.

Acuity Brands announced that from now on it will work exclusively with OLEDWorks to expand its OLED luminaires product portfolio, targeting the architectural lighting market.

Acuity Brands has offered OLED lamps and installations for many years, using both OLEDWorks and LG OLEDs. Acuity Brands says that it has worked with OLEDWorks for years, and have found it to be the superior OLED technology in the market".