OLED100 results and demonstrator coming soon

Sara Ver-Bruggen - 13 Oct 2011

OLED100 - the EU-funded collaborative R&D project tasked with improving OLED lighting technology for general lighting applications - has wrapped up and results will be disseminated in November 2011.

For general lighting, OLEDs have to compete with existing and upcoming lighting, achieving power efficacies of up to 100 lumens per watt, which fluorescent tubes are capable of, and operational lifetimes of up to 100,000 hours, which are now possible with commercial inorganic LED lighting. As well as improving efficacies and long operational lifetimes equivalent to commercial general lighting technologies, the project has also focused on fabrication on larger glass substrates.

As part of the dissemination of the project next month a press event will be held where a demonstrator based on nine 33cm x 33cm panels connected together will be unveiled. OLED100 was completed at the end of August.

OLED100 coordinator Stefan Grabowski works at Philips in Aachen, Germany, where the company's OLED lighting pilot facility is also located. Grabowski presented an overview of the project's final results earlier this week at the Plastic Electronics 2011 conference and exhibition in Dresden.

Production

In due course, Philips should be able to indicate how the project results will be transferred to enhance production. Philips, which produces OLED lighting products for lighting designers and architects, announced a €40 million expansion of its OLED pilot production facilities earlier in 2011.

Grabowski says to develop OLED lighting for general illumination applications the emphasis needs to encompass R&D, to design more advanced OLED lighting technology, as well as investment in manufacturing capacity. Challenges include getting more light out of the OLED stack, enhancing efficacies, lifetimes and transferring to production.

Under OLED100 the 33cm x 33cm panels have been made on the Gen. 2 line at Fraunhofer IPMS, a pre-pilot production facility in Germany. Other project partners include materials supplier Novaled, Osram and Siemens.

The next issue of +Plastic Electronics magazine is a lighting special, with a series of articles on the latest technologies and emerging markets for OLED lighting.
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