Philips - Page 8

The Fraunhofer Institute first announced their Tabola OLED lighting panels back in October 2010, with plans to release them in Q1 2011. We haven't heard anything since (and I assumed the project was scrapped) - but last week I got a nice surprise in the mail: three sample panels (two transparent, one structured). The Fraunhofer are now producing sample panels and have actually started to ship these cool transparent Tabola OLEDs to customers now - which makes these the first transparent OLED lighting panels on the market. Read on for our hands-on review.

There are reports that TPVision will launch OLED TVs in 2012, and will present the first sets at the IFA fair in August. TPVision will buy OLED panels from LG Display. This report confirms earlier report from February. We do know that LG Display reported that several clients are interested in its OLED panels (some suggest that Sony is one of them).

TPVision is the TV joint-venture between Philips and TPV, now owned by TPV Technology. TPVision uses the "Philips" brand for its televisions.

Yesterday we reported about the new Philips OLED panels and installations at the L+B 2012 exhibition. Today we've got a couple of new videos and photos from the show. Check out the beautiful Kinetic and ShowFlakes installations:

Philips has some interesting news for us today at the opening of the L+B 2012 exhibition: a new OLED panel that is suitable for functional lighting, a couple of new OLED installations and a nice new chanelier.

First up is a new OLED panel called the GL350 (GL stands for General Lighting). This is the first OLED to hit the "functional lighting" barrier as Philips calls it with its high brightness - 115 lm. It's 12.4x12.4 cm in size (155 cm²) and very homogeneous according to Philips.

Deutsche Bank's Berlin office installed a huge OLED chandelier that has 384 Philips Lumiblade panels. It's quite beautiful:

The chandelier consists of 24 square frames (made from shiny chrome aluminum) that are suspended in a column around a pole of dichoric glass. Each frame holds 16 rectangular OLED panels, so in total the chandelier has 384 OLEDs (or 2.4 square meters of active area).

Last week we reported about Philips' OLED lighting roadmap - and they mentioned that they already provide structured OLEDs. In this post I'll explain what Philips means by that. A structured OLED is a custom made OLED lighting panel that contains a text or an image, like the ones in the photo below:

Philips claims they are the first company in the world to provide such OLEDs, and they have developed special technology and masks to enable production of these custom-made panels. Philips say they already got several customers buying these OLEDs. It takes them time to prepare the production line, so usually clients buy 100 pieces or more. They wouldn't name any customers, but hinted about automobile makers and "high luxury outlets".

A couple of days ago we reported that Audi is experimenting with OLED technologies - with a concept car that has hundreds of Philips-made triangular OLED panels on the car's body. Today we present a video and more details about Audi's OLED designs:

Audi actually has 3 OLED based designs. The first is rather simple - rear lights that are made from four small red OLED panels, and a flashing turn indicator made from 8 panels. Audi actually has a roadmap for introducing OLEDs. They say that OLEDs will be used as rear lights in the "relatively near future". It will take a few more years for OLEDs to be used in brake lights as these need to be about five times brighter than rear lights.

Germany launched a new research project called HARPOON that aims to improve OLED lighting's efficiency in a cost effective way. We don't have a lot of details about this project yet, but it seems that it will involve software simulation and optimizations of vacuum related production processes.

The project's coordinated is Philips, and it is partly funded by the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia. First results will be published in 2014.

Update 2: We got new photos, more details and a video showing the three OLED applications demonstrated by Audi.

Update: We just got word from Philips saying that they are providing the OLED panels for Audi...

It turns out that Audio is experimenting with OLED lighting. The company unveiled a concept car that has hundreds of triangular OLED panels on the car's body. This sure is pretty:

Philips released a new roadmap for their OLED lighting products. The company decided to split its OLED offering into two families - one for decorative lighting and one for performance lighting. The decorative panels are normally reflective in the off state, and Philips will offer transparent ones as soon as next year. Color tunable and transparent panels will arrive in 2018. And Philips predicts that by then it'll be able to offer 1x1 meter panels! It will sure be interested to see those large, flexible, light emitting panels...

Decorative lighting roadmap

The downside of the decorative panels is the efficiency: In 2015 these panels will offer only 15 lm/W (that's only marginally better than an incandescent lamp). By 2018, those large flexible panels will offer 35 lm/W - which is still very low (Fluorescent lamps today offer 70-100 lm/W).