A few days ago, Blackbody announced a new OLED lamp (the light photon) It was the first time I heard of Blackbody. Today Blackbody has unveiled a large OLED chandelier that uses 282 OLED panels. Their CTO, Bruno Dussert-Vidalet, was happy to answer a few questions:
Q: Can you give me some background-info on Blackbody? Is it part of Astron-FIAMM? Do you have other investors?
Blackbody is the commercial brand of Astron FIAMM for the general lighting industry.
Light Photon OLED lamp
Q: Do you have any OLED Business partners?
No we are doing all the OLED alone, we use commercial and R&D available materials.
Q: Do you actually produce OLED panels? Are the production line in France? Are these pilot-lines? If so, when can we expect mass-production?
We produce all OLED panels by our self, the development and the production is entirely made in Toulon (France), the light photon proposed for sales at MOSS is the pilot line production. We expect production in series by October this year.
The Big Bang OLED chandelier
Q: Do you make Polymer-OLEDs or Small-Molecule ones? Phosphorescent or fluorescent ones?
We use all available solutions in the small molecules field.
Q: Can you give us more technical details on your OLED panel? What is the efficiency? Do you make only one size (47x37)?
We are using a gen 2 tool, so we are actually limited for the maximum size at 470x370 mm. For quality, reliability and lifetime reasons we have limited the efficiency between 20 and 25 Lumen par watt, especially considering that the target market of the light photon is not only efficiency sensitive.
Q: Can you tell us the price of one of your panels?
We are not selling panels, but tailored panels integrated in luminaires, for that reason we do not have a panel price but several OLED lamp price.
Q: Do you also plan to introduce color-tunable OLEDs? And flexible/transparent ones?
We are not currently planning to work on color tunable OLEDs, but we are active from already a long time on transparent and curved OLEDs.
Q: About the Light-Photo lamp: Do you plan to make it into a "commercial" product in the future? or will it remain a premium hand-made prototype product?
In this specific case, the Light photon is entirely produced by us for FLOS. The current plan is to launch the commercial version of the Light photon through the FLOS commercial network in October.
Q: Can we expect new lamps with your OLED panel inside soon?
Yes, please stay tuned.
Q: We'd be happy to get your OLED panel roadmap for the future years.
We are working on several projects for different customers, and because of the high competitiveness of this industry we are obliged to keep the maximum confidentiality on those projects.
Thanks Bruno. Good luck to both you and Blackbody!
