Philips - Page 6

In March 2012 we posted on Philips' structured or customized OLED. A structured OLED is an OLED lighting panel that includes a pattern (text, or image). Back then Philips said a typical order is about 100 pieces or more because it took them a long time to prepare the production line to make the panels.

Now Philips have apparently upgraded their process, and now they offer new "artwork" panels - structured white OLED square tiles (60 x 60 mm, white). Each panel costs €120 (including the driver and power supply) and delivery time is eight weeks. You simply send them your jpeg and they prepare the panel. Nice.

Audi, Philips, Automotive Lighting, Merck and the University of Cologne successfully concluded an OLED research project (called OLED 3D), and developed the world's first large-area 3D OLED car rear lighting panels and installed a prototype on an Audi TT.

A 3D OLED means that the OLEDs have a curved surface - not just in one direction. These are glass based panels. It's not flexible glass (like Corning's Willow glass), it's the regular glass Philips are using in their regular OLEDs, but curved. The material used (made by Merck) are soluble, and the production process is described as "web printing" by Philips (I'm not sure what is meant by that).

Audi installed a new OLED installation in a high-level conference room (used for internal and external meetings) in their HQ at Ingolstadt. The installation includes 15 OLED luminaires, each containing 36 Philips Lumiblade GL350 OLED panels.

In total there are 540 OLED panels and the total lumens count is almost 58,000. There isn't any other functional lighting in that room, which (according to Philips) makes this the world's first usage of OLEDs as purely functional lighting.

Last week we reported that Philips is looking for licensees for their OLED display IP portfolio. Today IPXI (Intellectual Property Exchange International, a financial exchange for licensing and trading of IP rights) gave some more information about the contract.

Philips has a portfolio of more than 600 patents (including 225 granted globally) that are all related to AMOLED displays, and represents nearly two decades of research. IPXI are offering Unit License Right (ULR) contracts - and each unit provides the right to manufacture, use, sell, offer to sell or import five square meters of an OLED display for application in any display screen device.

Intellectual Property Exchange International (IPXI), a financial exchange for licensing and trading of IP rights, is going to help Philips license its OLED display IP portfolio (which has over 600 patent assets, including 225 issued patents worldwide).

IPXI will two public web presentations on June 5 at 10:00 CT and 20:00 CT to unveil the contract offering, present details and launch the marketing campaign.

Philips just sent us a note saying that they installed a LivingScrulpture 3D OLED system in their Somerset (New Jersey) office's lunch area. The LivingScrulpture 3D is a kinetic system based on modular OLED blocks.

The system in Somerset uses 36 base modules for a total of 576 OLED panels. Each OLED panel is 76x76 mm in size (active area 61.4x60.5 mm) and the color temperature is 3,000K. The price of each base module is about â‚¬1500 - which means that this system costs about â‚¬55,000.

SilenceSolutions unveiled a new telephone box, which uses five Philips Lumiblade GL350 OLED lighting panels (probably the first-gen ones at 115 lumens each). I guess the idea is to have a small silent place to conduct your phone conversations. Nice design anyway...

A few months ago Dezeen magazine visited Philips' Lumiblade Creative Lab and produced a very nice video showing Philips' OLED lighting panels, designs and installations. This video is now nominated for the prestigious Webby award in the people's choice category - which means anyone can vote on this. So it's a good idea to vote if you want to help spread the OLED word (and also because it's indeed a cool video).

Dezeen's video shows Philips' interactive mirror, the LivingSculpture modular 3D system, structured OLEDs and the OLED automobile backlight prototype. It even features my friend Dietmar Thomas (Philips OLED unit Communication Specialist).

Philips announced an updated GL350 OLED lighting panel (we'll call it the GL350 Gen2). The new panel looks the same as the panel announced in April 2012 (square 124.5x124.5 m), but it's brighter: 200 lumens per panel, up to 45 lm/W efficacy and a luminance of 6,500 cd/m². This new panel will be available in Q3 2013.

We do not know the price of this new panel. The current GL350 is only available in a starter kit that costs €400.00 (about $555) that includes 3 OLED panels, a driver, a short circuit protection unit and all required connector cables. 

Back in May 2011 Philips announced that they are investing €40 million in a new OLED lighting production line in Aachen. Today Philips inaugurated the new line - which has been producing OLEDs since Q3 2012 in fact (but it's only official now).

Philips say that this new line is the largest and "most modern" OLED lighting line in the world. The clean-room is approximately 2,000-square meter in size. The new line is adjacent to Philips' pilot line that's been producing OLEDs since 2007. Philips plans to produce all their panels in the old line, but the old one will remain in service - mostly for custom orders or additional capacity if the new line is fully booked.