Lighting designers and architects will be able to work with OLED lighting from several sources this year as more developers start shipping products and samples.
In February 2010 Lumiotec, an OLED lighting panel producer based in Yonezawa city, Yamagata, Japan, will start shipping sample OLED panels with commercial production to start later this year, joining Philips and Osram in the supply of OLED lamps for designer and architectural applications.
Lumiotec's decision is a response to calls from many potential customers for OLED lighting. The company showed sample panels at the LED/OLED expo in Tokyo in April 2009 drawing hundreds of visitors to its stand.
Factoring in feedback from customers, Lumiotec plans to expand production capacity up to 40,000 panels annually from July, forming part of a strategy to start commercially producing panels before 2013.
Devices being shipped next month are design sample kits consisting of a 145mm x 145mm OLED lighting panel, a controller and an AC adaptor. The kits are priced at ¥80,000 each (about €630), though no technical and specification details have been given yet. Lumiotec's website will take domestic orders from 15 February and also overseas enquiries.
Lumiotec is a joint venture set up in 2008 to develop and commercialise OLED lighting panels. The company's investors and founders are Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the majority stakeholder, Rohm, Toppan Printing, Mitsui & Co and professor Junji Kido, whose research into organic electronics has resulted in the core IP being exploited by Lumiotec.
Osram and the Orbeos OLED panel
Exploiting work within the OPAL project, sponsored by Germany's Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Osram announced availability of its Orbeos OLED lighting panel in late November 2009. The panels are aimed at premium lighting segments including architecture, hotels and catering, offices, shops and private homes that can afford the €250 price tag for each lamp.
The round panels measure 80mm in diameter and emit a warm white light (2800 K, CRI up to 80). Their 25lm/w efficiency, which falls short of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), is comparable to that of halogen lamps.
Philips Lumiblade
Within the next few months Philips is expected to start honouring purchases of its Lumiblade OLED lighting panels that were made available to order through its website in 2009. The panels have been developed with the lighting design and architectural market in mind. Several shapes and structures are available for experimentation. The lamps cost anywhere between €70 and €500. According to review of the Lumiblade kit, a striking feature of the lamps is not just how flat (we're talking a few millimetres) the light source is, but also the degree in which the OLED's lighting emitting surface dominates the entire luminaire.
OLED lighting buzz
Lighting designers, planners and architects are excited about OLED lighting for many reasons, not least because the technology will provoke a paradigm shift in lighting, where the OLED - a uniform diffuse light source - negates the need for the infrastructure typically used in luminaires to maximise light output.
However despite these developments 2010 will not be the year for commercial production of OLED lighting. They are signifcant because they provide designers and architectural firms with more examples of the technology for experimentation, in turn raising awareness and demand for OLEDs and helping to justify investment in high-volume manufacturing.
Beyond these announcements of OLED lighting sample kits and lamp launches, other important developments are taking place to establish OLED lighting supply chains and pave the way for the technology in general lighting markets. In Germany the BMBF-funded So-Light project is bringing together 11 companies and institutes to establish OLED value chains for lighting and signage - from materials development, to processing technology and integration. Meanwhile in the US, the DoE has just signed off two projects under its solid state lighting initiative, which are concerned with investment in pilot production for OLED lighting.