The US Department of Energy (DoE) has granted $1.1 million to Penn State University professors Chris Giebink and Michael Hickner for a new project to increase the efficiency of OLED lighting panels.
The researchers, collaborating with OLEDWorks in this project (and previous ones as well), aim to find a way to lower the refractive index of the organic materials which will increase the external efficiency of OLED devices. The basic idea is to insert other molecules and blend them with the existing OLED materials which lower the refractive index without adversely affecting the properties of the original molecules.
If the research is successful, the researchers will work with OLEDWorks to see if this solution can be scaled up and be adopted in OLEDWorks commercial OLED lighting panels. A while back the same researchers managed to solve an issue with OLED lighting panels failure - and the solution they found is indeed adopted in OLEDWorks commercial panels.
