Back in April, Philips unveiled a new OLED panel called Lumiblade Plus - which is the world's most efficient panel under production (45lm/w). Back then Philips said that the panel was 'developed by Konica Minolta', but wouldn't say more. Today Konica Minolta issued a press release with some more information: it appears that indeed the materials and structure were developed by KM and the production will be handled by Philips. Production will start in autumn 2011.
While I do not understand the cooperation entirely, after talking to KM it seems that both companies will offer the panel for sale. It's not clear whether Philips will pay royalties for KM on each panel, but it might be so. Philips are already accepting orders for the Lumiblade plus (â¬120, minimum quantity is 100 units) - but KM says that the panels are not shipping yet. We do not know how many the panels Philips is going to make - but perhaps the agreement with KM was part of the decision to expand Philips' OLED capacity.
There was some speculation whether these panels use Universal Display's PHOLED materials (KM signed a license agreement with UDC in 2008) - and I can confirm that indeed it is so. According to a flyer the companies distributed, the panel uses full phosphorescent organic materials supplied by Konica Minolta using UniversalPHOLED technology from UDC.
Here are the technical details of the Lumibalde Plus panels:
- Luminous efficacy: 45 lm/W
- Thickness: 1.8 mm
- Lifetime: 10,000 hours
- Luminance: 1,000 cd/m²
- Current/voltage: 71.5 mA / 3.6 V
- Color coordinates (x; y): 0.45 ; 0.41
- Color temperature: 2,800 K
