LG Chem - Page 8

There's an interesting article over at JapanTimes, covering the Lighting Japan 2014 event that took place last month. They also posted a nice video from the conference, showing several OLED installations from NEC Lighting, Philips, PIOL and others. There are also some flexbile (formable) OLEDs on display, I'm not sure if these are from LG Chem or Konica Minolta (the only two companies that actually produces flexible OLED lighting prototypes).

NEC Lighting is developing OLED lighting for a long time (over 10 years), and during the video you can see demonstrations of the company's OLED panels, including transparent ones (these were unveiled in 2013).

Switzerland-based Glas Troesch unveiled a glass showcase with embedded OLED panels. The showcase (unveiled at the SwissBau construction fair) uses six LG Chem OLED panels (100x100 mm, 60 lm/W, 4000K).

Interestingly the OLED panels in this showcase are reporetedly connected wirelessly to the power source and are embedded in the glass shelf itself (they probably mean transparent conductors). This showcase will also be on show at the Frankfurt Light & Building event in April. It's not clear whether this is a commercial product or just a prototype.

Andy Zhou, an Australian industrial design student from Monash University teamed up with the CSIRO flexible electronics team to produce an interactive OLED luminaire, the Plus Pendant. The lamp is controlled from an Android application via Bluetooth - it can change the movement of the arms and also show lighting sequences.

The lamp uses 36 OLED panels - 45 lm/W panels made by LG Chem. There are 32 rectangular ones and four square ones.

LG sees a bright future for flexible displays. In fact the company predicts that flexible smartphones will take-up 40% of the smartphone market in 2018. Samsung thinks the same, and they are basing their numbers on DisplaySearch - which means that LG is also probably actually quoting the same source.

LG Electronic's mobile product planning chief, Dr Ramchan Woo, says that "we are bored of flat" and that a flexible device is much more than just a flexible display. For example one of the key technologies in the G Flex is the flexible Stack & Folding battery made by LG Chem (here's a photo of the battery). Another key technology is the thin cover glass - and so we learn that this phone, similarly to Samsung's Galaxy Round also includes a cover glass, which explains why it is not truly "unbreakable".

LG's G Flex phone is now shipping in Korea, and besides the flexible curved OLED display, it also uses a curved battery, developed and produced by LG Chem. The non-removable battery's capacity is 3500mAh. Here's a photo that shows the new battery next to a regular LG mobile phone battery:

LG Chem developed (and patented) a technology which they call Stack & Folding which reduces physical stress when realizing the curved design of battery packs. LG Chem started producing curved batteries this month .

Back in February, LG Chem, LG Electronics and Designboom teamed up for a new OLED lighting design competition. There were two categories, regular (rigid) panels and flexible ones. A few months ago Designboom announced the winners - but I only found about that today. Some beautiful designs were submitted...

The lamp above is the lambda by H. Gerlach. It won the first place (and $5,000) in the flexible OLED category. LG says that this design exemplifies the visual characteristics of OLED panels, especially the flexible ones, and it is easily transitionable to mass production.

LG officially launched the G Flex today in Korea. This is the first phone that uses LG Display's flexible plastic OLED display. The G Flex has a 6" 720p RGB flexible OLED display made by LG Display that is curved from top to bottom (unlike Samsung's Galaxy Round which is curved from left to right). Unlike Samsung, LG did specifically say this is a plastic-based display, but they too don't seem to mention the fact that it is shatterproof.

The G Flex has a 2.3Ghz Snapdragon S800 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory, a 13MP camera, NFC, Android 4.2.2 and a 3500mAh non-removable battery (LG Chem's curved battery). The G Flex has two rear-mounted buttons and a "self-healing" back (that will heal scratches quickly).

So LG Display is already producing flexible OLED panels, which will allow LG to produce curved phones. Now LG Chem announced that they are already mass producing stepped and curved batteries. The company is also developing bendable "cable" batteries (see image below), but it will take some years before LG Chem can produce them.

A stepped battery is a battery that is built from two battery units on top of each other in the shape of a "step". This means that LG can make a custom battery for a specific device model which will make better use of round edges, etc. The LG G2 for example uses a stepped battery (produced at LG Chem's Nanjing plant). They say this allowed them to increase battery density by 16% and add more than 3 hours to the G2 batter life. LG Chem will be able to produce designs with even 4 steps in the future.

In early 2013, LG Chem announced that they will start mass producing flexible OLED lighting panels in July 2013. Now the company updates us that they upgraded the panels (to 55 lm/W, up from 45 lm/W) and have delayed mass production to Q4 2013.

LG Chem also planned to release 80 lm/W rigid OLED lighting panels (these will be by far the most efficients OLED panels), but these too will be delayed to Q4. On the other hand, by the end of this month the company will launch new 3000K panels. In fact LG Chem will release 3000K versions of all its current panels (53x55 mm, 100x100 mm, 140x140 mm and 200x50 mm) - which all feature 55-60 lm/W and a high CRI (over 90). LG Chem's current panels all feature a color temperature of 4000K.

In June LG Chem announced that all its OLED panels now have a CRI of over 90. CRI determines a light source ability to reproduce colors on which the light shines, and a high CRI means a "high light source quality". Today they released a nice video explaining why is it important to have a high CRI and restating the company's commitment to OLEDs:

LG Chem says taht CRI and efficiency are trade-off factors, but LG Chem managed to maintain high panel efficiency (60 lm/W), color temperatures between 3000K and 4000K and lifetime at 20,000 hours.