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The future’s bright

“OLED lighting could be the fastest way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,” said Peter Visser in this morning’s industry perspectives seminar on multimedia, displays and lighting.

Visser is the project manager of OLLA - a €21 million European project that aims to develop flexible OLEDs with colour changing options in the next five years. OLLA is made up of 24 partners, including 10 from industry (such as Philips and Osram), and Visser believes that commercial interest in OLEDs for lighting applications will tap into a very valuable market.

“The lighting market is currently worth €58 billion Euros, of which lamps make up 25%, the rest are fixtures, electronics and controls,” said Visser. “OLEDs offer a very efficient alternative to lamps, they contain no harmful substances, can produce high quality light -with a colour rendering index (CRI) of over 80 and require an operating voltage of only around 3 V.”

Visser believes that OLEDs also offer many potential future options such as flexibility, varying colour and full transparency. The OLLA project hopes to develop a 30x30 cm white tile with a lifetime of 10,000 hours, efficiency of 50 lm/W, brightness of 10,000 cd/m², and a CRI greater than 70 to compete with existing light sources.

To achieve these goals, the group is investigating various materials and processes, and is also looking into lower cost solutions such as fabricating OLEDs without costly indium tin oxide contacts. “So far we have achieved small OLEDs, which are suitable for decorative or signage applications,” said Visser. “But in the future we hope to integrate OLEDs into many applications in the home, the office and in vehicles.”

Visser painted a very bright future (quite literally) - predicting OLED ceilings in the home that emulate beautiful blue skies during the day and red sunsets at night, OLED wallpaper, OLEDs within glass shower screens, furniture and advertising and in the control panels of cars.

Posted by Marie Freebody on April 9, 2008 7:49 PM | Permalink