Glass - Page 9

OLEDWorks have successfully completed its Series A funding round from private investors. While we do not know the exact amount, this money will (according to the company) enable them to start producing "low-cost" OLED lighting panels.

OLEDWorks is building an OLED lighting manufacturing fab in Rochester, NY, and they say that they will offer low-cost OLEDs through the use of equipment and process innovation. Next week at LightFair 2013 they will present their first OLED prototypes, which they plan to start shipping in the second half of 2013.

OLEDWorks' first panels will be 4x4 inch (12x12 cm) in size - and they will be efficient (over 45 lm/W). The company will offer two options: OLED panels on glass and on metal. The panels be thin (under 3 mm) and will come in six color variants - red, blue, green, amber and three white color options (3000K, 3500K and 4000K).

EMDEOLED is a German company that is developing an OLED based light bulb for residential lighting in collaboration with the University of Technology Braunschweig. Basically the idea is that using an inner-coating process, they are creating a replacement for regular bulbs in which the glass is coated from the inside. They have developed their first prototypes, shown below (unfortunately they did not disclose any technical details):

EMDEOLED's OLEDs are ITO-free, and they have actually developed two prototypes - one with PLEDs and one with SM-OLEDs. The company says that the inner coating results in a very high material yield (and so hopefully will be cheaper than flat OLEDs). The OLED bulbs are also easy to seal as the glass actually protects the OLEDs from the outside.

Nanomarkets released a new white paper in which they discuss whether there's a real market for novel encapsulation technologies (focusing on OLED and PV applications). While the total encapsulation market for these two applications is large (around $500 million in 2013, growing to $2 billion by 2019), most of it will be rigid glass.

In fact in 2015 only 21.3% of the market will use novel encapsulation, and this only grow to 26.9% by 2019. In terms of revenue, the novel encapsulation market for OLED sand PVs will grow from about $50 million in 2013 to just over $500 million in 2019, and most of it will be for PV applications, OLEDs will only reach about $100 by 2019.

The USPTO unveiled a new patent application by Apple, that describes a mobile device that features a wrap-around flexible AMOLED display (yes, the specifically say it's an OLED display). The whole device is wrapped with the display. The patent also describes a mechanism that determines which parts of the display to use using a camera and a facial recognition software. An OLED is obviously the best choice for a full-color, flexible display that can be efficiently turned-off in some areas.

Apple's patent also describes an option to include multiple transparent displays, overlaid on top of one another. I'm not sure I understand the advantages of using several transparent OLEDs one on top of the other (except for the creation of 3D images). The device shown above represents just one of the concept device designs - Apple also describes "regular" rectangle devices and a cylindrical device. According to the patent the phone body may be totally transparent (made entirely of glass, for example).

In January 2010, the DOE awarded $1.6 million to PPG Industries to develop "Low-Cost Integrated Substrate for OLED Lighting". This program is now finished and PPG has been recognized by the DOE for significant achievements in advancing OLED lighting technology. PPG was the only company honored in the OLED lighting area during the DOE 2013 SSL R&D workshop.

The team at PPG demonstrated a float glass-based integrated substrate with scalable light-extraction technologies and transparent conductive films for OLED lighting applications. This substrate may lead towards significant cost and performance advantages when compared to conventional indium tin oxide (ITO)-coated display-grade glass substrates.

Corning says that it will take at least 3 years before we'll start seeing flexible displays based on its Willow glass. Corning sent samples of this glass to companies back in June 2012 hoping that products will arrive in 2013, but it seems that manufacturers find it hard to adopt their processes for the flexible glass.

Willow glass (announced during SID 2012) is an ultra-slim (50 um and 100 um) flexible glass that can support backplanes and color filters in both LCD and OLED panels. Willow glass can withstand temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius, and can be used in R2R production processes (ITRI developed a full R2R process with Corning).

We've just got word from LG Chem that the company now plans to start mass producing the world's first flexible OLED lighting panels in July 2013 (and also high-efficiency 80 lm/W rigid panels). This is exciting news and if LG Chem will indeed go through with this plan it will be an important milestone for OLED lighting. Those OLED panels will be 200 x 50 mm in size and will feature 45 lm/W and a color temperature of 4,000K.

LG's flexible panels are only 0.33 mm thick and weigh under 8 grams - which not only allows new design possibilities but is also useful for energy saving for applications sensitive to weight (electric cars, airplanes, submarines, etc).

Nanomarkets posted an interesting article on flexible glass (based on their Flexible Glass Market report). Basically they're saying that the opportunities for flexible glass have never been better, and they forecast that the market in 2013 will reach $125 million, and this will grow to over $2 billion before 2020.

Interestingly Nanomarkets says that the OLED market will start adopting flexible glass in 2013 - with $4 million in revenue (this will grow to $280 million by 2020). Perhaps Nanomarket thinks that Samsung will adopt flexible glass in their first YOUM flexible OLED based panels?

OSRAM is presenting a new luminaire (called the Rollercoaster) that features transparent OLED panels. OSRAM says that they have made some significant advances and they now plan to start series-production of such panels in 2014. 

The Rollercoaster looks like a glass and metal sculpture when turned-off and has a mobius-form (and so looks like a rollercoaster). It has 30 rectangular OLED panels, each with an active area of 18x6.5 cm. The OLEDs feature an efficiency of 20 lm /W and a transparency of 57% (which they say is the highest yet for such large panels. Fraunhofer's TABOLA transparent panels, which we reviewed back in April feature 45% transparency).

ITRI announced it has developed a full roll-to-roll process on 100um flexible glass substrates - they say they're the first in the world to do so. ITRI has been collaborating with Corning on this technology, and they are using Corning's flexible Willow glass, unveiled at SID 2012.

ITRI and Corning developed specially designed R2R machines that produce touch panel modules on Corning Willow Glass, a flexible display-grade glass substrate. ITRI are now looking for companies that sell this technology - which can be used for OLED display and lighting panels, solar panels and more applications.