A consortium of European industrial and academic organisations have received European funding to the tune of €12.5m to help them develop organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that can be used in the general lighting industry.
They are all involved in the so-called OLED100.eu programme, which follows the successful OLLA (Organic LEDs for Lighting Applications) programme which started in 2004 and concluded earlier this year.
Researchers working on the OLLA programme developed white OLEDs with efficacies of 50.7 lm/W at an initial brightness of 1,000cd/m² and with lifetimes well above 10,000 hours.
With OLED100.eu, the emphasis will be on developing OLEDs for general lighting applications that will sport higher power efficacies of 100 lm/W, lifetimes of 100,000 hours, a large area of 100x100cm² and a low cost - around €100/m².
'The European Council has agreed to cut at least 20 per cent in CO2 emissions by 2020 and OLED100.eu is an important initiative to advance the development of energy-efficient lighting solutions that will help achieve that goal,' said Dr Stefan Grabowski of Philips Research, and the project manager of OLED100.eu.
‘Building on the success of OLLA, OLED100.eu will deliver OLEDs with twice the efficiency, 10 times the operational lifetime and 10 times the substrate size. The participation of leading lighting manufacturers such as Philips and Osram ensures a rapid transfer of any result into real products,' he added.
OLEDs are a new class of solid-state light sources that are emerging as a candidate that could replace conventional lighting systems. Organic LEDs generate a diffuse, non-glaring illumination with high colour rendering. They are flat, thin, and have the potential to serve as efficient large light sources.
OLEDs are instant-on, can be dimmed and can be produced on substrates of basically any shape. Their flexibility make them highly appealing for designers, manufacturers and consumers.
Partners in the OLED100.eu consortium include:
• Bartenbach LichtLabor GmbH, Austria
• European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC), France
• Evonik Degussa GmbH, Germany
• Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS), Germany
• Microsharp Corporation Limited, Great Britain
• Novaled AG, Germany
• Océ Technologies BV, The Netherlands
• OSRAM Opto Semiconductors GmbH, Germany
• Philips Technologie GmbH, Business Center OLED Lighting, Germany
• Philips Technologie GmbH Forschungslaboratorien, Germany
• Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Germany
• Saint-Gobain Recherche SA, France
• Siemens AG, Germany
• Technische Universität Dresden, Institut für Angewandte Photophysik, Germany
• Universiteit Gent, Belgium
Coloured small molecule OLEDs with Novaled PIN OLED technology (Picture by Novaled)
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