April 2012

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We've got some interesting updates from Visionox today, regarding their OLED lighting program. The company has started to produce new OLED lighting panels. Those panels (product code BCPW030060A, spec here) are 73x42 mm in size (active area 30x60 mm), and are 1.8 mm thick. The lifetime is over 10,000 hours (LT70) at 1000 cd/m², and the color temperature is 4500K-5000K. The panels are actually quite cheap at $70. We do not know the efficiency but apparently it's not very high.

Visionox also unveiled their next generation panels, currently being produced in small quantities on a pilot line. The new panels are 80x80 mm in size (active area 64x64 mm) and feature a color temperature of 4500K, over 80 CRI and a lifetime of over 10,000 hours (LT50 at 2000 cd/m²). The new panels are quite efficient (40 lm/W) and Visionox revealed to us that they are using phosphorescent materials. These panels aren't available to buy yet.

AU Optronics started to mass produce small (4.3") AMOLED panels at its 3.5G LTPS line in Taiwan, making about 8,000 substrates a month. The company says their 4.5-Gen AMOLED Line in Singapore (at AFPD) will start AMOLED mass production before year-end 2012, which is faster than original plans (2H 2013). The new fab's capacity will be 15,000 monthly substrates. 

AUO also said they have set up an "experimental" 6G production line with plans to produce large (over 32") samples before the end of 2012. AUO's president claims that their AMOLED R&D group is now staffed with hundreds of engineers. AUO already unveiled a 32" OLED prototype that has an Oxide-TFT (IGZO) backplane and was fabricated using vapor deposition using a metal mask. The panel featured Full-HD (1920x1080) resolution, 100,000:1 contrast ration, 0.01ms response time and brightness of 200cd/m².

We're still waiting for the first Apple OLED product, but in the meantime the company keeps filing OLED related patents. The latest one deals with brightness control on OLED displays. In OLEDs, controlling the brightness isn't straightforward like in LCDs (in which you simply change the brightness of the BLU) - as you control each pixel by itself.

In Apple's new brightness control method, image data will be converted from a "frame buffer encoding" gamma-corrected color space to a logarithmic value. In the logarithmic value, a digital dimming control value may be subtracted rather than divided. This can be converted directly to an analog OLED pixel brightness control signal, without first being converted to a linear digital value. This results in a simple brightness/dimming control - which means it'll be more efficient and requires less hardware.

Philips' booth at the L+B 2012 was apparently quite beautiful. We already posted two videos and lot's of photos showing the various new installations, lamps and panels, but the latest video that Philips sent us is the best one yet I think, and it gives a great view of the new panels and the beautiful spiral chandelier:

During L+B 2012 OSRAM unveiled a new OLED panel (the Orbeos SDW-058 40 lm/W panel), but the company also had an interesting new OLED lamp/installation on show:

Apparently this uses around 1,000 Orbeos panels, and costs €150,000. It looks somewhat like the older Qube installation, but smaller in scale (you cannot enter inside it seems...).

The Holst Centre submited eight proposals for funding from the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), and five projects won funding, included two OLED lighting specific projects: IM3OLED,  a software tool for multiscale OLED lighting modeling and IMOLA which will develop large-area OLED lighting modules with built-in intelligent light management.

Samsung decided to merge its three display units: Samsung Display, Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) and S-LCD. The merger is expected to close on July 1st. Samsung Electronics will control the new unit, which will also be held by other Samsung units (such as Samsung SDI). This isn't a surprise.

A 7-inch Super AMOLED prototype

The new company will be producing LCD and OLED panels - for mobile devices and TVs. It seems that the company will focus on OLEDs though. Here's a quote from Samsung's PR announcing the Samsung Display spin-off back in February, stating the importance of OLED technology:

Update: It turns out that this movie is actually rather old (from 2008)... I thought it was new. Sorry!

BASF released a nice video showing their "modern lighting solutions" - large area color-tunable transparent OLED lighting panels embedded in windows:

We don't have a lot of information on BASF's OLED program. We do know that they are collaborating with Philips on transparent OLED/OPV panels, used in Daimler's Smart Forvision concept EV: