LG Chem - Page 9

In October 2009 the Zumtobel group and the Fraunhofer Institute established a new OLED lighting company called LEDON OLED lighting to develop and manufacture OLED lighting modules. Today Zumtobel announced it is acquiring its partner shares in the company and renaming it Tridonic Dresden.

Tridonic LUREON REP module

LEDON's products were already marketed under the Tridonic brand (which is Zumbotel group's lighting components business). Managing directors Jörg Amelung and Patrik Danz will continue to head the company which currently employs 11 people.

In February 2013 LG Chem unveiled their flexible OLED lighting panels, with plans to start producing them in July 2013 (they now aim to do so in September 2013, a slight delay). Those panels use a thin-glass substrate and a metal protective layer with LG Chem's Face-Seal encapsulation.

Today LG Chem announced that they developed new plastic-based (transparent polyimide) OLED lighting panels (shown in the photos above and below). These panels are more bendable (see photo above) than the current metal/glass ones, and LG Chem refers to them as "Plastic Film type Truly-Flexible OLED Panels". The company aims to mass produce these new panels in H1 2015. The new panels are even lighter than the current ones (which are only 0.33 mm thick and weigh under 8 grams).

LG Chem announced that since April 2013, all its OLED panels 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".

LG Chem says that generally, 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.

LG Chem published two nice (and short) videos showcasing their OLED Lighting panels. The first video introduces their 100x100 mm and 50x20 mm panels (with 45 or 60 lm/w). It shows several lumiaries from WAC Lighting, Acuity Brands and others.

The second video shows LG Chem's booth at EuroLuce 2013. Here you can see two LG Chem designed lamps that use their upcoming flexible OLED lighting panels (50x200 mm):

Thorn Lighting installed a semi-permanent OLED lighting installation in the entrance to Thorn's Academy of Light in Spennymoor, UK. The installation (that has two fixtures) uses LG Chem's 65lmW-1 panels (@3500K) together with some LED lamps (they call this an asymmetric luminaire).

Thorn says this is a "concept" design and not a real product. The installation was "inspired" by the Topdrawer project, but it wasn't part of this project as such. The installation was created as a collaboration between Thorn Lighting, Octo Design, Tridonic and Durham University.

Acuity Brands unveiled three new OLED luminaires concepts at Lightfair 2013 last week. The company says that the new concept designs "demonstrate new dimensions in human connectivity, made possible through interactions with the pleasing, fluid lighting expressions only the OLED source can achieve". While these are just concepts, the company does plan to launch them as commercial products and will announce this later this year. As far as we know, Acuity Brands uses LG Chem made panels.

The first concept is called Modelo and it uses square and rectangular panels to create personalized ceiling and wall luminaires. Configurations can include straight, curved, round, oval and square patterns.

In February 2013 LG Chem told us that they plan to release the world's first flexible OLED lighting panels and high-efficiency 80 lm/W panels in July 2013. The company is now showing these upcoming panels at Euroluce 2013, and is still on track to release them in July.

In the photo above you can also see some new lighting design suggestions from LG Chem and others that use the new panels.

LG Chem, LG Electronics and Designboom teamed up for a new OLED lighting design competition. The first category will use LG Chem's standard rigid OLED panels. The winner will receive $5,000 and the runner up will receive $3000. In the second category, one can use LG Chem's flexible panels and/or transparent panels. There will be one winner in that category ($5,000).

This is not just a design competition - LG wants to find lamp designs that they can produce, and they will have the right of first refusal to the exclusive use of the designs for production. If I understand it correctly, LG will pay $10,000 for the rights to the design they want to produce.

The US Embassy in Helsinki is installing an Acuity Brands Trilia OLED fixture in their Innovation Center. They posted this nice photo showing the work in progress:

The Trilia is a modular lamp that uses either two kinds of models (the Tri and the Straight) to create unique network-like design. The Tri section model uses 24 OLED panels (1810 lumens) while the Straight section model uses 8 panels (603 lumens). This specific installation has 136 OLED panels altogether.

The OLED panels (produced by LG Chem) feature an efficiency of 60 lm/W, 3500K color temperature, 15,000 hours of lifetime (LT70) and a CRI of over 80.

LG Chem sent us an update on their OLED lighting program, with some very exciting news. Besides planning flexible OLED lighting panels in July 2013 (I already posted about this earlier), LG says they have successfully developed high efficiency OLED lighting panels (80 lm/W, similar to CFLs) that will enter mass production in July 2013 (together with the flexible panels). These will be the world's most efficient OLED panels (beating LG Chem's current 60 lm/W panels).

The upcoming 80 lm/W will feature 20,000 hours lifetime (LT70), 3000K color temperature, brightness of 75 lumens (3000 cd/sqm) and a CRI of 85. The first 80 lm/W panels will be 100x100 mm in size and only 1.1 mm thick (thinner than LG's current panels which are 1.8mm thick). LG says that these panels will have a surface temperature of 26 degrees - roughly around room temperature (this is better than their current panels).