Power consumption - Page 28

Panasonic Electric Works (PEW) released some very interesting news today regarding their OLED Lighting project. First of all, they announced that Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting (PIOL), their joint-venture with Idemitsu Kosan will start shipping OLED lighting panels tomorrow (September 1st) - to local and international markets. Those rather small (80x80mm), thin (2mm) and light (38g) OLED panels will feature no less than Ra90 color rendering (they say it's the world's highest) and 3,000 cd/m² - the world's brightest panels. The efficiency is 30 lm/W and lifetime (D70) is 10,000. The temperature is 3,000K (like a regular light bulb).

PEW itself will start offering OLED lighting modules in December 2011 - which will include the OLED panel, a frame and a built-in control circuit. PEW says that these modules will be "easy-to-embed" and will have a narrow frame design (11mm maximum width). You will also be able to replace the OLED panel in the modules in a simple way.

Universal Display announced advances in their white OLED lighting panels. The new panels use a Stacked-OLED (SOLED) architecture and exceed the DOE's commercial panel target of 10,000 hours (at an initial luminance of 3,000 cd/m²) by more than 20%. The panels are 15x15cm² in size and feature 90,000 liftimre (D70), 55 lm/W efficiency and a CRI of 86. A stacked-OLED provides better lifetime, but has more layers and is more difficult to manufacture.

The company also showcased an all-phosphorescent, white OLED luminaire designed into an under-cabinet lighting system. This development was funded in part under a DOE Solid State Lighting program back in 2009. The warm-white OLED offer a power efficacy of 70 lm/W when operated at 190 lumens (~1000 cd/m²), and 61 lm/W when at 420 lumens (~2200 cd/m²). The panels operate at a low voltage of ~4 V.

Researchers from RIKEN (Japan) developed a new efficient copper complex that can be used to replace Iridium phosphors in OLEDs - and would be much cheaper (copper is about 1/2000 cheaper than Iridium).

The researchers altered the molecular environment in which the copper sites - wrapping each copper ion with a newly designed organic ligand. The ligand forced the copped to become three-coordinate (three bonds to the ligand), rather than the usual four. This caused the efficiency (EQE) of the copper complex to increase dramatically.

I just had an interesting talk with two industry insiders (one of them is a Samsung supplier) - about Samsung's upcoming Super AMOLED HD display. It turns out that these displays are indeed real - and will be unveiled soon. We can expect 5" to 6" smartphones in fall 2011 (the first will probably be the GT-I9220 with a 5.3" display) and 7" tablets by the end of 2011.

A 7-inch Super AMOLED prototype

According to my sources, Samsung managed to achieve HD resolution on these small displays by using PenTile matrix again (like in the original Super AMOLED displays). They have also developed a new manufacturing process and are using new materials. It might be that they have finally started to use Universal Display's green PHOLED (we reported that Samsung is using a green phosphorescent in their new 5.5-Gen plant, but perhaps they will only start using it in the HD displays).

Novaled announced it has developed a highly power-efficient white OLED structure achieving 60 lm/W at a brightness of 1,000 cd/m² capable of reaching 100,000 hours lifetime (at an initial brightness of 1,000 cd/m²). The new OLED uses red and green phosphorescent materials and a commercially available fluorescent blue material.

Novaled says that a fluorescent blue emitter usually results in much less efficient devices, but their PIN OLED technology and proprietary materials resulted in this highly efficient device. Using this fluorescent materiel has several advantages - good device stability, higher lifetime and it is commercially available. It also enables a broad coverage of the complete visible color range.

Back in April, Philips unveiled a new OLED panel called Lumiblade Plus - which is the world's most efficient panel under production (45lm/w). Back then Philips said that the panel was 'developed by Konica Minolta', but wouldn't say more. Today Konica Minolta issued a press release with some more information: it appears that indeed the materials and structure were developed by KM and the production will be handled by Philips. Production will start in autumn 2011.

While I do not understand the cooperation entirely, after talking to KM it seems that both companies will offer the panel for sale. It's not clear whether Philips will pay royalties for KM on each panel, but it might be so. Philips are already accepting orders for the Lumiblade plus (€120, minimum quantity is 100 units) - but KM says that the panels are not shipping yet. We do not know how many the panels Philips is going to make - but perhaps the agreement with KM was part of the decision to expand Philips' OLED capacity.

OSRAM announced it has developed a new white OLED panel that achieve record efficiency - 87 lm/W. The tested panel had a brightness of 1,000 cd/m² and a color temperature of about 4,000K. At 5,000 cd/m² brightness the panel offers almost 75 lm/W.

OSRAM used a pure thin-film approach. The current was distributed evenly over the active surface using a special injection electrode on the light-generating surface and offers homogeneous light density from every angle.

Nippon Seiki announced a new line-up of 0.8" and 2.7" monochrome energy efficient PMOLED modules. Those new panels offer around 50% energy saving compared to Nippon Seiki's older modules. The green panels have been available since 2010, but now the company added red, white, blue and amber options.

0.8-inch PMOLEDs

The 2.7" panel offers 64x256 resolution (0.26x0.26mm pixel pitch) and 90 nits brightness. The active area is 16.6x66.5 mm.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the 7th round of SSL projects, totalling $15 million for OLED and LED lighting research, product development and production projects. One of the two production projects is headed by Moser Baer. The DOE will give $2.9 million (and Moser Baer will add $1 million) to reduce the cost of manufacturing OLED lighting panels. Moser Baer's pilot production line in Canandaigua, NY will be used to demonstrate these manufacturing improvements.

Prototype OLED lamps by UDC

Moser Baer's pilot production line is built together with Universal Display and uses UDC's PHOLED technology. The project was already awarded $8.3 million by the DOE back in January.

Universal Display has quietly released a new PHOLED material performance chart. Their Green-Yellow material now has 1.4 million lifetime hours (LT50), and their Red color offers 900,000 hours. Blue is still very challenging, and their light blue offers only 20,000 hours (LT50). Here's the complete chart:

The company also released some PHOLED material efficiency. Using only red PHOLED (with green and blue fluorescent materials) will result in a display that is about 15% more efficient compared to an LCD (this is the combination Samsung used in their 4.5-Gen AMOLED fab). Adding green color will result in a a display that is 30% more efficient compared to an LCD (this is the combination Samsung is using in their new 5.5-Gen fab). Adding blue will give a 50% more efficient display. UDC says that further enhancements (not specified) can result in a display that is 67% more efficient than an LCD. All these results are based on a 4" display operating at 300 cd/m² showing a video that has 40% pixels on.