Aerospace OLEDs - Page 3

Spike Aerospace is developing a supersonic business jet. The company announced that instead of conventional windows, it will use curved, super-thin digital displays. The S-512 will reportedly cost $80 million when it becomes available in 2018.

The jet will use micro-cameras to create panoramic views on the curved displays in real time. This has several advantages - you can display whatever you want on these displays, it eliminates glares, it reduces the aircraft's weight, part count and drag and will also simplify the aircraft construction and integrity.

In May 2013, the US DOE granted a $225,000 project to Universal Display and IDD Aerospace to develop a low-energy shelf phosphorescent OLED light targeted at aircraft interiors. A few days ago, the two companies exhibited a prototype panel at the DOE's SSL R&D Workshop.

The OLED prototype shown at the workshop is a shelf utility panel that is very slim and energy efficient. The two companies believe that the data generated by developing this shelf utility light may be applied to larger-scale OLED lighting aircraft projects, including cabin applications for interior furniture, galley, interior structure enhancements, as well as other potential adoptions in cabin accent, task, ceiling and sidewall lighting, and sign backlighting.

Fraunhofer's COMEDD and POG Präzisionsoptik Gera have co-developed OLED structures coated in the range of micrometers at opaque or transparent glass substrates. This technology can be used in complex optical and opto-electronical systems in a range of applications (medical, laser, aerospace, telescopes, microscopes and even sports optics). Basically these are transparent optical devices with self-emitting figures, points or lines;

The best technology used today to achieve the same effect uses prisms. The advantage the new design is that the active luminous area is integrated directly into the glass substrate which results in a better field of view, and the whole system is much more simple - and hopefully will result in cheaper designs.