Power consumption - Page 20

Ason Technology was established in 2006 in Japan to develop OLED lighting technologies. The company finally unveiled their first OLED lighting panel during the FPD International 2013 exhibition last month.

Ason's panel use Multi-Photo-Emission (MPE), which is a stacked emitter architecture, which is also used by Lumiotec. Usually MPE panels use about 3 layers, but Ason managed to stack 10 or more emitting layers which enables them to reach a very high brightness and CRI. Ason also developed their own diffusion reflection layer so that the emitted color does not change even when viewed from different angles.

Updated: This story had some inaccuracies and is now updated with new information from First-O-Lite

China's First-O-Lite says they developed an efficient (111.7 lm/W at 1,000 cd/m²) hybrid OLED lighting device (2 cm²). This is a hybrid device that uses a fluorescent blue emitter along with red and blue phosphorescent emitters. The company says that this is probably the most efficient hybrid OLED device ever produced that can meet the Energy Star color requirements.

First-O-Lite has established a volume production fab and will soon start producing OLED panels. These will feature over 55 lm/W (at 3,000 cd/m²) and will use the company's external light extraction technology.

Last month Ignis Innovation announced that they began producing some 55" OLED TV evaluation samples for display makers to test their MaxLife compensation technology. The company now tells us that the first sample panel arrived at their offices, and they will start fulfilling orders (to display makers and OEMs) in about two weeks.

The company did some initial measurements, and they say that this panel offers the world's lowest power consumption (20% lower than LG and Samsung's current OLED TVs), longest lifetime (a significant boost over existing OLED panels). The panels are highly uniform (much better than the OLED TVs no the market).

So LG Display is already producing flexible OLED panels, which will allow LG to produce curved phones. Now LG Chem announced that they are already mass producing stepped and curved batteries. The company is also developing bendable "cable" batteries (see image below), but it will take some years before LG Chem can produce them.

A stepped battery is a battery that is built from two battery units on top of each other in the shape of a "step". This means that LG can make a custom battery for a specific device model which will make better use of round edges, etc. The LG G2 for example uses a stepped battery (produced at LG Chem's Nanjing plant). They say this allowed them to increase battery density by 16% and add more than 3 hours to the G2 batter life. LG Chem will be able to produce designs with even 4 steps in the future.

The EU launched a new project (called ENAB-SPOLED) that aims to use solution-based OLED materials to enable high performing cost competitive OLEDs for the lighting market and to develop a functional luminaire demonstrator. More specifically, the project partners will develop new materials (transport materials, emitters), new optical technologies for light guiding, and also process technologies for solution processing of small molecule and PLEDs.

This 2-year project has a budget of €4 million and is supported by Germany, Austria and the UK. The project partners are Novaled, Cambridge Display Technology, Tridonic, Zumbotel, the University of Durham and the Fraunhofer IAP. More information can be found here.

Sharp is showing new 7" MEMS-Shutter Display prototype at Ceatec 2013. MEMS-Shutter displays are similar to LCD in that they have a LED backlighting unit (BLU), color filters, and a component that blocks the light. But instead of liquid-crystals and polarizers, these displays use MEMS shutters.

A MEMS-Shutter Display is about 6 times more efficient than a regular LCD. This is mostly due to the fact that you do not need a polarizing filter like in LCDs. The displays also use a WRGB structure in which there is a white subpixel which increases brightness and efficiency. The panels on display had a resolution of 800x1,280 (220 PPI). The backplane is an IGZO. Sharp co-developed these panels with Qualcomm.

DisplayMate, the display testing, measurement and calibration experts just got their hands on a pre-release Galaxy Note 3 production unit, with its 5.7" Full-HD Super AMOLED display (386 PPI, PenTile). They put the unit to extensive testing (and also compared it to the Note 2). The conclusion? This is the best performing OLED display ever and it beats LCDs across the board!

The most notable advancement in this new panel is the high brightness. It can achieve 660 cd/m² in high ambient light. It's not just 55% brighter than the Note 2, it's actually the brightest display ever tested at DisplayMate. A very notable achievement for Samsung's OLEDs, which were lagging behind LCDs in brightness.

Researchers from the University of Utah, Bonn and Regensburg developed a new wagon-wheel (or rotelle-pasta) shaped OLED molecule that emits non-polarized (random) light.Those oligomers, or wrapped-up polymers may enable OLEDs more efficient than polymer based OLEDs (PLEDs).

The researchers explain that current poylmer OLED molecules (which are shaped like spaghetti pasta, to continue the same metaphore) emit polarized light. Some of that light get trapped inside the OLED device and this makes it less efficient. They say that up to 80% of the generated light may be trapped in the OLED because it is polarized.

Philips hosted an OLED lighting webinar on August 31. Ingolf Sischka, Philips' OLED Product & Marketing Manager explained about OLED lighting, its advantages compared to other lighting technologies and Philips' current and future offerings. Towards the end of his presentation (27:45), he discusses what's to be expected from Philips in 2014, and he details the upcoming 3rd-gen GL350 panel that will be unveiled towards the end of 2013.

The Gen 2 panel offered 200 lumens and 45 lm/W. The new upcoming panel will feature 300 lumens and 55 lm/W - so it will be brighter and more efficient (this is an estimate and not final specifications yet, though). The GL350 Gen-2 is now in production, and I'm guessing that the Gen-3 will enter production sometimes towards the end of 2014.

In early 2013, LG Chem announced that they will start mass producing flexible OLED lighting panels in July 2013. Now the company updates us that they upgraded the panels (to 55 lm/W, up from 45 lm/W) and have delayed mass production to Q4 2013.

LG Chem also planned to release 80 lm/W rigid OLED lighting panels (these will be by far the most efficients OLED panels), but these too will be delayed to Q4. On the other hand, by the end of this month the company will launch new 3000K panels. In fact LG Chem will release 3000K versions of all its current panels (53x55 mm, 100x100 mm, 140x140 mm and 200x50 mm) - which all feature 55-60 lm/W and a high CRI (over 90). LG Chem's current panels all feature a color temperature of 4000K.