Power consumption - Page 25

Mitsubishi Chemical and Pioneer have jointly developed OLED elements produced using a wet coating process for the light-emitting layers. The two companies will establish a testing facility with an aim to commercialize this technology for OLED lighting mass production by 2014.

Mitsubishi's and Pioneer's OLED coating project began in January 2010, and in May 2011 the companies announced that they managed to fabricate a white OLED in which the emissive layer was formed in a coating process. That OLED featured 52 lm/W and a lifetime (LT50) of 20,000 hours (@1,000cd/m² luminance). The new panel produced now features 56 lm/W and a lifetime (LT70) of 57,000 hours (@1,000cd/m² luminance) which is quite an improvement.

My first meeting at SID was with Universal Display's Janice Mahon. UDC had some pretty interesting updates for us at SID, and some nice exhibits in the booth as well - only OLED lighting panels, but quite interesting ones. This post will be rather long...

Novaled have developed a new class of n-doped electron transport layer (ETL) materials, suitable for both OLED TV and small mobile display applications. Novaled have developed two new new air-stable dopants (called NDN-77 and NDN-87) and two new host molecules (called NET-164 and NET-142). Combining these different materials can lead to different efficiency, voltage and lifetime in the final display.

Novaled says that the new materials can feature as much as double the lifetime compared to their previous materials.

We've got some interesting updates from Visionox today, regarding their OLED lighting program. The company has started to produce new OLED lighting panels. Those panels (product code BCPW030060A, spec here) are 73x42 mm in size (active area 30x60 mm), and are 1.8 mm thick. The lifetime is over 10,000 hours (LT70) at 1000 cd/m², and the color temperature is 4500K-5000K. The panels are actually quite cheap at $70. We do not know the efficiency but apparently it's not very high.

Visionox also unveiled their next generation panels, currently being produced in small quantities on a pilot line. The new panels are 80x80 mm in size (active area 64x64 mm) and feature a color temperature of 4500K, over 80 CRI and a lifetime of over 10,000 hours (LT50 at 2000 cd/m²). The new panels are quite efficient (40 lm/W) and Visionox revealed to us that they are using phosphorescent materials. These panels aren't available to buy yet.

Universal Display announced it will supply phosphorescent OLED materials to the Fraunhofer Institute which will use them to make efficient white OLED lighting panels. The two companies signed a two-year agreement under which COMEDD will develop and produce OLED panels "for market development". The upcoming panels will use UDC's all-phosphorescent solution.

The Fraunhofer is already producing and shipping OLED lighting panels, including structured and transparent ones (we posted our on-hands review just yesterday). The Fraunhofer does not plan to mass produce their panels, they are just meant to help interested people experiment with this exciting new technology. Of course in the future the Fraunhofer may license or spin-off its production technology.

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.

Osram unveiled their second generation OLED lighting panel, the square Orbeos SDW-058. The new panel (which is built in the new pilot production line in Regensburg) is more efficient at 40 lm/W (up from around 25 lm/W), and it's also larger (119x119 mm). We do not have more information about the new panels yet.

Osram also unveiled a new connector system - a plug&play solution for Orbeos panels. Osram says this is the first step toward a standardized contact system for OLED components. Just one click is need to connect all Orbeos panels (both mechanically and electrically). The new system also allows to connect two Orbeos panels back to back.

AUO will soon start producing 4" to 5" AMOLED panels (Q2 2012), aimed toward smartphone applications. Today Digitimes reveals some details about their first panels, the 4.3" qHD ones. The panels will consume 370mW at 300 nits, and this will drop to 300mW by 2014.

The price of these panels will be around $45-$55 - about 90% higher than an equivalent LTPS LCD. Reports suggest that AUO is collaborating with Sony while other reports say that HTC secured AUO's entire OLED capacity.

LG Display is touting their 4.5" True HD IPS-LCD display (which does not support Full-HD, mind you, the resolution is 1,280x720). The company posted some slides comparing the HD IPS-LCD display to Samsung's Super AMOLED HD (as used in the Galaxy Nexus and other devices). LG Display says that the LCD is more sharp and clear (due to the Real Stripe matrix vs the Pentile one used in Samsung's AMOLED):

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.