OLED Lifetime: introduction and market status - Page 11

A few days ago, the US Energy Department (DoE) announced its tenth round of efficient SSL lighting awards, awarding more than $8.2 million to nine projects. Today the DoE released more details about the projects it awarded in this round. There are four OLED projects, awarded a total of $3.8 million.

Acuity Brands received $455,131 to develop an OLED Luminaire with integrated DC current drivers in each panel and advanced controls. The goal is to demonstrate a luminaire with an efficacy of 65 lm/W and a luminous output of 4,000 lumens.

Towards the end of 2014 it was reported that Kaneka developed a new OLED panel that achieves a lifetime of 50,000 hours, and the company started producing such panels shortly after. It turns out that Kaneka demonstrated the new panels at the Euroluce 2015 tradeshow in Europe.

Kaneka had several panels on display - in three different sizes (80x80 mm, 100x100 mm and 143x23 mm) and five different colors (white, amber, blue and green). All panels are 1.05 mm thick and feature 50,000 hours of lifetime.

Finland's VTT Technical Research Centre developed a new technique to deposit patterned OLED lighting elements on flexible plastic films. This could enable a low-cost process technology to make flexible light emitting structured films - which they see used mostly in advertisement campaigns.

The new room-temperature deposition technology uses standard traditional gravure and screen printing - which means it may be possible to use in regular printing houses. The process makes OLED lighting stripes which are 0.2 mm thick and uses polymer based OLED emitters.

Japan-based Ason Technology unveiled their first OLED lighting panel in 2013, and last year we featured an article discussing the company's technology and business. In a recent interview to Sangyo-Times, the company's CEO reveals some interesting updates.

Ason spent almost eight years to develop a new multi-stack structure that can be used to create OLED with many layers, which results in long-lasting high-brightness panels. The company now reports that it developed an OLED with twelve (!) emitting layers, which enables it to reach a high brightness of 50,000 cd/m².

Last month it was reported that Kaneka developed a new OLED panel that achieves a lifetime of 50,000 hours, almost double from the company's current OLEDs. Now it is reported that Kaneka already started producing these new OLEDs, and samples have been sent to some customers for evaluation.

Kaneka further reveals that the 50,000 hours refers to LT70 (i.e. until the brightness falls to 70% of its original value). They measure at 3,000 cd². As their previous panels had a lifetime of about 17,000 hours (LT70), this means they actually almost tripled the lifetime. This improvement was achieved by optimizing the device structure, and a more accurate thin-film deposition process.

Ason Technology was established in 2006 in Japan to develop OLED lighting technologies. In November 2013 Ason unveiled their first OLED lighting panel, and today we're bringing new details on the company's technology and business.

Ason spent almost eight years to develop a new multi-stack structure. Compared to the multi-photo-emission (MPE) structure developed by IMES, Ason's stack enables many layers (MPE allows up to 2 or 3 max). Stacking several layers allows the OLED panels to feature a high brightness without compromising the lifetime. In addition to the so-called Ason-Stack, the company also uses a unique diffuse reflector. Ason says that their technology will allow them to produce relatively affordable and efficient high-brightness OLEDs, which will also feature a longer lifetime and larger size compared to traditional OLED as well as no-angle dependency.

In early 2014, Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical announced that they began to mass produce OLED lighting modules made with a "wet coating system". Soluble OLED processes should offer a great production cost reduction - but Mitsubishi's panel suffered from limited lifetime (15,000 hours).

According to a new report from Japan, Mitsubishi managed to double the lifetime, and their newest panels offer 30,000 hours. This was achieved by new longer-lasing OLED materials and a different device structure. Mitsubishi already shipped panel samples to lighting equipment makers and will setup up their marketing effort soon via their Pioneer JV (MC Pioneer OLED Lighting).

According to a news report from Japan, Kaneka developed a new OLED panel that achieves a lifetime of 50,000 hours, almost double from the company's current OLEDs. The panel is 8x8 cm in size and 1 mm thick.

Kaneka has a small production line with an annual capacity of about 20,000 panels. The company plans to expand the production capacity with an aim to halve the manufacturing costs. Kaneka plans to achieve OLED sales of ¥50 billion (around $450 million) by 2020.

Researchers from the University of Michigan developed a new phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) emitter that extends the lifetime by a factor of 10. Researchers have been trying to develop an efficient, long-lasting blue PHOLED emitter for years now, and this may be the breakthrough everybody's been waiting for.

OLED makers SDC and LGD already use red and green PHOLED emitter materials in their OLED panels. While phosphorescent emitters do not last as long as fluorescent emitters, they are much more efficient. All commercial OLED displays currently use a fluorescent blue emitter as the best PHOLED blue to date only lasted for a few hundred hours.

LG Chem announced it developed new OLED lighting panels that features 100 lm/W and a lifetime of 40,000 hours. The plan is to release these panels towards the end of 2014. It's not clear, but it's likely that LG Chem aims to replace all current 60 lm/W OLED panels with the new 100 lm/W ones.

According to reports from Korea, LG Chem claims that their OLED panels will be available at lower prices compared to LED lighting. I'm guessing this is more of a "forward looking" statement as OLED panels are still very expensive, even after LG's plan to cut OLED prices by about 60% in Q3 2014 (from about $600/Klm to about $200/Klm).