106
TECHNOLOGY / LAMPS & GEAR
OUR OLED INSIDER
At the OLED Insider Summit in London recently a number of OLED panel manufac- turers stood before an audience of lighting designers and luminaire manufacturers to vaunt the paradigm-shifting, world-chang- ing potential of their product. Each stressed that they were offering a glimpse of the future. If this is true, the audience was non-plussed. This particular version of the future looks rather boring and flat. The current state of the art OLED panels are still at the novelty stage: very expensive small glass-based panels that are inef- ficient, fragile with quite short life. They emit a fairly pleasant, if boring, flat white light quality. But what of the future? Since inorganic LEDs are now incorporated into thin and efficient lighting panels, what, one may well ask, is the point of point pouring money into OLED technology? In a well-argued presentation by Dr Geoff Archenhold the medium-term future of lighting is predicted to be based on LEDs, with OLED and inorganic LEDs steadily in- creasing market share over traditional light sources as costs fall and efficiency rises. The open question is the market share each LED technology will gain over a 10 to 20 year period.
The most articulate of the sceptics, Ian Ruxton of Speirs and Major, pointed out that the development road maps of the OLED manufacturers could be leading nowhere unless there was a suitable significant lighting application in mind and he could not see what that might be at the moment. He concluded that OLEDs were more of a
David Morgan gives a product designer’s view on this year’s OLED Insider conference and asks if the OLED road map is going nowhere
light-emitting building material than a lamp or light source and that OLEDs could play little more than a supporting role in light- ing other than in niche applications such as furniture and decorative luminaires. He stated that he could not currently see any killer applications that would support the investment being made in OLED. Unless the production technologies improve rapidly so that OLEDs can compete with in- organic LEDs, what kind of lighting applica- tions would justify the investment made to produce them?
Over the next year or two, it was pre- dicted by the speakers that OLED panels will become somewhat larger – up to 200 x 200 mm, more efficient – up to 50 lumens per Watt, with a longer life of up to 10,000 hours to 50% initial lumens and will be available in colour changing versions. How- ever, they will still be very expensive, made of glass and have very limited applications beyond decorative, emergency and novelty lighting. To make OLED lighting elements easier to integrate into luminaires several of the manufacturers including Philips and LEDON will be producing the panels in modular form that will snap into a holder without the use of solder.
So far this does not sound very exciting but the holy grail of OLEDs is their production on a flexible plastic substrate by a roll to roll printing process. When this happens the cost of OLEDs will fall dramatically and the potential applications will therefore increase.
GE were the only OLED manufacturer at
this event claiming to be close to produc- ing flexible, polymer based materials using a roll to roll printing process with reason- able efficiency and life expectancy. GE’s Andy Davies explained how they had been working for the past ten years to integrate their expertise in plastic materials and lighting. Their material that was shown at various lighting trade shows this year will be introduced in 2011. Although all the other OLED panel speakers were sceptical about producing flexible materials within a five to ten year time period GE feel they have overcome problems in making the barrier material resistant to water and oxygen transmission – apparently the key issues to ensuring long life. Working with their part- ners at Konica Minolta in Japan the material will have a life of up to 10,000 hours before light output falls to 50%. Efficiency will be 50 lumens per Watt with a CRI of 80 and a surface brightness of 1,000 nits. GE envis- age signage as being one of the key initial applications but that it would migrate into more general lighting along with other LED technologies in due course. Geoff Williams who runs the polymer OLED project for Thorn Lighting in the UK claimed that 200 million m2
of office fluorescent
lighting is replaced every year in the EU. If OLED can gain even a small percent- age of this market then the polymer OLED materials that he is working on would have a viable future with a market of perhaps 10 million m2
within 10 years. He anticipates that OLED materials will meet fluorescent T5 performance by 2016 to 2018. However
1 MGR chandelier, designed by C+B Lefebvre using Blackbody OLEDs 2 Modular Lighting Instruments’ O’Leaf uses Philips Lumiblade panels 3 Edge from Established & Sons, a decorative desklamp incorporating Lumiblade
1
2
3
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132