Rohm

Rohm has unveiled a new planar LED (not OLED) lighting panel. The panel is made by using LED packages on a plane surface and a light diffusion plate which makes it seem like a planar device - like an OLED lighting panel. It has a very high CRI (98) - achieved by using a white resin layer on the package which prevents the sulfuration of the lead frame.

Rohm says that the panel is superior to OLED panels - in terms of cost and efficiency (the life time is also very good at 50,000 hours). Of course OLED lighting is still a new technology which improves rapidly - and will offer features that will be hard to achieve using LEDs (transparency, flexibility, low-cost printing processes, etc). Rohm haven't yet decided when to commercialize this panel, but they say that the technologies needed are "almost completed". Israeli's Oree is already producing similar LED panels.

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.

Rohm is showing a new OLED microdisplay at CEATEC. Unfortunately we do not have any information yet... beside a nice photo:

Back in 2007, Rohm unveiled a color OLED microdisplay prototype with 320x240 resolution, and said they were working on a 640x480 pixel one. We're guessing the new microdisplay has a higher resolution than that...

UPDATE: We have some new photos from Engadget (who's got a video, too).

Rohm is showing a new wristband with an OLED display. Their idea is that OLEDs can actually be used in jewelry or a watch band. OLEDs are expensive, but so are jewelry pieces so they think that it might be a good usage for the technology. The OLED in the wristband is 0.3mm thick, and run via a small lithium-ion battery.

Rohm is also showing OLED table lights (one inch wide, 4 inches tall). One of their OLED lamp prototypes consumes about 300 milliwatts.

Rohm had two OLED items at CEATEC. The first is a 'shadowless' OLED lamp. The lamp is using a 'complex' array of OLED panels so that objects beneath it has no shadow.

The second item they had on display is an OLED Flash. The flash can emit light with a high luminance (100,000cd/m²). The flash can also be used as a 'regular' OLED lamp, with a luminance of of 3,000-4,000cd/m² or higher.

Read more here (TechOn)

Researchers from Kyoto University together with Mitsubishi Chemical, Pioneer, and Rohm have developed a new bendable OLED display panel.

We do not have a photo of this display, but they did present a monochrome (blue) business card-sized prototype. The researchers say that their technology can be adapted to full-color displays.