Plextronics on OLEDs

Andy Hannah CEO of Plextronics, a global leader in OLED materials, gave a powerful message on OLEDs as a breakthrough technology at the LOPE-C conference last week. He noted how OLEDs promise novel form factors, energy efficiency and potentially lowest cost. They are easily dimmable, have bright, emissive light, a wide color gamut and high CRI, fast response, wide viewing angle and very high contrast. He noted how Peter Putnam CTS (Sony XEL-1) has reported, "My measuring equipment wasn't sensitive enough to handle the super-low blacks from this OLED TV".

 

 

White OLED target is 150+ lm/W vs incandescent at 15 lm/W, fluorescent at 35 to 80 lm/W and LEDs at 100+ with a target of target 150+ lm/W.

 

The Plextronics summary is as follows:

 

He can see parallels in how the LCD industry grew from nothing to a $100 billion industry in the twenty years following 1988. He believes OLED flat panel displays (FPD) are ready for commercialisation given recent significant announcements from Sony, Samsung, Panasonic Matsushita, Sumitomo, UDC, LG Display and others but continuing improvement in LCDs and severe price competition with that technology is a concern.

 

 

Moving on to OLED lighting, he sees the evolution from incandescent lighting to fluorescent lighting , most recently in the form of compact fluorescent CFL then parallel rollout of LED and OLED lighting because they are largely complementary.

 

Frequent complaints about CFL include color, dimming, less bright and shorter life he noted and IDTechEx would add that they have glass to cut you, mercury to poison you and precious terbium. There is a very negative view of LED color and cost for lamp bulb replacements but they are fine in flashlamps etc. LEDs are successful in car lighting and traffic lights, exhibiting very long life but high cost of maintenance. He sees OLED lighting as commercialisable but currently in pre market mode. Building lighting of new forms and also new markets for lighting, such as wearable photodynamic therapy, await this technology. The key players forecast full commercialization at various dates between 2010 and 2012.

 

He noted that a survey had discovered that experts saw the major market areas for OLED, besides FPD and general lighting, being:

His key takeaways were:

For more see www.plextronics.com .

 

To learn more attend Printed Electronics Asia 2009 or Printed Electronics USA 2009.

 

 

Also read Displays and Lighting: OLED, e-paper, electroluminescent and beyond.