Automotive OLEDs: introduction and industry news - Page 34

Nissan is working on a concept smartwatch specifically for their Nismo motorsport cars. The idea is that the watch monitors and analyzes the car's performance, and also the driver's heart rate and allows posting information directly to social media (via bluetooth).

This is just a concept currently, but Nissan will show this at the Frankfurt Motor Show - starting tomorrow. It appears that this watch uses a flexible display, it'll be interesting to know if they have a working prototype with a flexible AMOLED. At any rate, it seems that wearable smart-watches are quite the thing these days.

A couple of months ago, OSRAM posted an interesting article saying that OLED is the next technological development for car lighting. Today the company announced that it will unveil its OLED for automobiles product roadmap during the Frankfurt International Motor Show (September 12). The company says they achieved "road suitability" for their OLEDs and they will start offering initial special equipment based on OLEDs next year. They see OLEDs used in "series production of new vehicles" in 2016 at the latest.

Last year Osram were able to increase the temperature stability of their OLEDs. Now their panels are stable at 85 degrees Celsius for several hundred hours. Now the company says that the remaining obstacles regarding serial production are small. The company expects OLEDs to be used in rear light fixtures. Transparent OLEDs will offer new design possibilities.

OSRAM posted an interesting article which basically states that the next technological development for car lighting is OLEDs. As LEDs are already a standard in car lighting, the company is now developing OLEDs, whose major advantage (according to Osram) is that they provide "completely new options for the design of light and luminaires". The cars of the future, according to Osram will have both LED and OLED lighting sources.

Last year Osram presented OLEDs that were able to resist the high temperatures (at least 85 degree Celsius) required by the automobile industry. Back in 2012 those OLEDs resisted such high temperatures for several hundred hours, but the development continues and today the panel's high temperature resistance has been improved to several thousand hours. Now the company is tackling future use in commercial cars. This is great news but of course this will take time - "the automotive sector plans and develops its future models with very long lead times".

Audi, Philips, Automotive Lighting, Merck and the University of Cologne successfully concluded an OLED research project (called OLED 3D), and developed the world's first large-area 3D OLED car rear lighting panels and installed a prototype on an Audi TT.

A 3D OLED means that the OLEDs have a curved surface - not just in one direction. These are glass based panels. It's not flexible glass (like Corning's Willow glass), it's the regular glass Philips are using in their regular OLEDs, but curved. The material used (made by Merck) are soluble, and the production process is described as "web printing" by Philips (I'm not sure what is meant by that).

The UK's Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) published a short video with a concept automobile that uses all sorts of printed electronics devices. There's a very nice OLED Lighting strip surrounding the car, and of course also flexible OLED panels on the dashboard:

The CPI's OLED/OPV prototype line was designed to enable materials companies, device designers and end users to develop their technology within a fully automated, controlled environment. The system supports both small evaporized and soluble OLED materials, and the line uses slot die technology to allow the coating of substrates in a highly repeatable and reproducible manner with a uniform film thickness of under 50 nm.

We've just got word from LG Chem that the company now plans to start mass producing the world's first flexible OLED lighting panels in July 2013 (and also high-efficiency 80 lm/W rigid panels). This is exciting news and if LG Chem will indeed go through with this plan it will be an important milestone for OLED lighting. Those OLED panels will be 200 x 50 mm in size and will feature 45 lm/W and a color temperature of 4,000K.

LG's flexible panels are only 0.33 mm thick and weigh under 8 grams - which not only allows new design possibilities but is also useful for energy saving for applications sensitive to weight (electric cars, airplanes, submarines, etc).

The German OLED project So-Light has been successfully completed. This 3.5 years, €14.7 million project (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) addressed the complete value chain, from primary OLED materials through to OLED-lighting applications.

OSRAM has unveiled a cool new automobile rearlight prototype based on OLED Lighting panels:

The Automobile market is attracting many OLED producers. Just last month Astron Fiamm showed an updated Car.Bones prototype with OLED headlights, inside-lighting, turn indicators, and more. Audi has also unveiled some very unique OLED lighting designs, in collaboration with Philips.

BMW announced a new sport steering wheel (the M Performance) that aims to display data and info on the wheel itself. It includes a small white PMOLED display on the top and two LED meters on the sides. These displays can show you average fuel consumption, speed, oil and water temperature, g-force and cues for gear shifts.

The M Performance steering wheel costs $1,700.

Back in September 2010 Astron Fiamm has created a new really cool car concept called Car.Bones that uses OLED lighting: headlights, inside-lighting, turn indicators, and more. Today we learned that the company unveiled the second generation concept (Car.Bones 2012, with improved light output and design) at the the automotive salon in Paris. The company is in "advanced discussions" with several automotive manufacturers and suppliers to commercialize those technologies.

Astron Fiamm says that the OLED ensemble fulfills potentially all the exigencies of the European norm (ECE) for automotive exterior signal lighting. Each of the individual OLED panels can be addressed and animation can be created.