Pioneer - Page 3

Mitsubishi Chemical and Pioneer have been jointly developing OLED lighting technologies for a long time, including printed OLED panels. The companies are currently producing OLED lighting panels in which the bottom layer is coated and the emissive layer and the top layers are deposited by evaporation in vacuum (VTE).

Now the two companies presented a prototype panel in which both the bottom layer and the emissive layer were coated (the top layer was still deposited using VTE). The companies say this new process will reduce the cost of the panel to 10% compared to current OLEDs due to improved material utilization. They also say that the new panels will feature much longer lifetimes.

In December 2012, LG's Global OLED Technology (GOT) filed a lawsuit against Eastman Kodak, claiming that 18 of Kodak's patent actually belong to GOT. Kodak said these aren't related to OLEDs and so were not part of the 2009 deal (when GOT bought about 2,200 OLED patents and patent applications from Kodak). GOT also wanted to recover royalty payments from Pioneer that were paid to Kodak and not GOT (he Pioneer license was supposed to have been transferred to GOT but apparently Kodak wasn't able to obtain consent for the transfer).

Today GOT reported that the US court ordered Kodak to assign ownership of 3 patents to GOT (US patents #6,717,560, #6,892,014 and #6,999,138). This was a settlement agreed to by GOT and Kodak. Kodak will also assign the Pioneer license agreement to GOT, including all rights to receive royalty payments from Pioneer under the license.

Pioneer developed new flexible PMOLED panels. Those monochrome panels are bendable (curvature radius : 20mm) and very slim (0.15 mm thick) and light (0.04 g/cm²). Those flexible OLEDs use an ultra-thin glass substrate:

Pioneer wouldn't reveal any more details (such as when they expect to start producing such panels). But if you look at the text on the display, it seems that Pioneer expects to finish development by next year.

Pioneer and Mitsubishi established a new company called MC Pioneer OLED Lighting (MPOL). The new company (jointly owned 50:50) will handle OLED lighting marketing and sales in Japan. MPOL offers Verbatim's Velve color-tunable OLED lighting panels (jointly made by Mitsubishi and Pioneer).

MPOL has a nice website (in Japanese, though) that shows nice photos of the latest Velve installations such as the Issey Miyake store at Tokyo's JP Tower and the Kaiteki Cafe in Tokyo.

Verbatim sent us information about two new OLED lighting installations that use their 2nd-gen Velve color-tunable panels. The first one is in the Kaiteki Cafe in Tokyo:

Verbatim installed 28 OLED panels in the wall mounted mosaic, and there are also 12 units integrated into a table. Those table-integrated modules are controlled (dimming and color) by an iPad:

The Issey Miyake store at Tokyo's JP Tower has installed 99 Velve OLED panels in their handbag section. The panels are all 7x7 cm in size. It's not clear by the photo and the PR, but I guess that these panels keep changing their color (the Velve panels are the only color-tunable panels available today).

I'm guessing those are Verbatim's 2nd-Gen panels (as their 3rd-Gen ones aren't in production yet as far as I know).

Verbatim announced their 3rd-Gen Velve color-tunable OLED lighting panels, and the company managed to increase the efficacy to 51.6 lm/W. The brightness is the same as in their 2nd-gen panels (2,000 cd/m²). The panels weigh 193 grams and the active area is 123x123 mm. In fact it seems to be exactly the same as their previous panels.

Verbatim did not reveal when the expect to release those panels and at what price. We don't have any technical details either, but it's likely that these are phosphorescent panels. The OLED is manufactured by Mitsubishui Chemical (Verbatim's parent company) in partnership with Pioneer. Back in June 2012 we posted a hands-on review of the first-gen Verbatim panels, here's a short video from that review:

Pioneer announced it has established a new OLED lighting subsidiary (called Pioneer OLED Lighting Devices). The new company will take over Pioneer's OLED development and production. Pioneer is collaborating with Mitsubishi and is already producing OLED lighting panels (sold under the Verbatim brand).

POLD was launched with a capital of ¥200 million (about $2.1 million). Pioneer says that this new subsidiary will allow them to strengthen their OLED lighting program - in preparation for the OLED lighting market launch in 2014.

Global OLED Technology (GOT) has filed a lawsuit against Eastman Kodak, claiming that 18 of Kodak's patent actually belong to GOT. Kodak says that these 18 patents are not related to OLED technologies and so were not part of the 2009 deal (when GOT bought about 2,200 OLED patents and patent applications from Kodak). We do not what are the actual patents involved.

GOT is also seeking to recover royalty payments from Pioneer that were paid to Kodak and not GOT. The Pioneer license was supposed to have been transferred to GOT but apparently Kodak wasn't able to obtain consent for the transfer.

Verbatim started shipping the Velve OLED lighting evaluation kit back in May 2011, and last month they sent us a unit for review. This is the world's first (and only) color-tunable OLED lighting panel, and it's pretty exciting.