OCTOBER 26, 2010 Rethinking the Light Bulb Manufacturers Explore Taking OLED Technology From Cellphones to Lamps
By EVAN RAMSTAD Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303341904575576210769923180.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews ILSAN, South Korea—While consumer electronics companies struggle to take a vividly bright display technology called OLED from cellphones up to computer screens and TVs, the lighting industry may have more luck using it as a potential successor to Edison's bulb and fluorescent tubes. At the Korea Electronics Show earlier this month, big-name companies like Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Co. showed off new cellphones with OLED screens. One of their suppliers, Novaled AG of Germany, used its booth to instead show OLED-based lights, including a prototype of a desk lamp made of several cellphone-sized panels put together. Philipp Wellmann, an Asia manager for Novaled, said he expected such products to reach stores in about two years. "We are getting to the stage where design and prototyping is possible," Mr. Wellmann said. The worlds three major lighting players Royal Philips Electronics NV, Siemens AG's Osram-Sylvania and General Electric Co. are also developing OLED products. They hope it grabs a slice of the roughly $90 billion annual lighting market, according to research firm Strategies Unlimited. OLED technology uses less energy than incandescent bulbs and, in laboratory use, is nearly as efficient as fluorescent. The color of the light OLED produces is closer to natural light than either of the two dominant bulb technologies. The OLED lights can be both flat and flexible, even placed in glass that is transparent when the light is off. A small white OLED panel would cost more than $100 to produce today, but manufacturers in the lighting industry are seeking to bring down the cost to $10 or less. That's still far more than incandescent bulbs, which cost pennies to make and sell for less than $1. The OLED lighting ramp-up "is starting to happen and will be a significant market," said Janice Mahon, a manager at Universal Display Corp., a developer of OLED technology based in Ewing, N.J. OLED stands for organic light emitting diodes and is similar in name to another technology, LED or light emitting diodes, that has revolutionized the lighting industry over the last decade. Both technologies are semiconductors and they follow some of the same manufacturing techniques and falling-cost economics of the computer chip industry. But the two technologies differ in their structure and the type of light they produce. LEDs, which are seen in products ranging from flashlights to giant video billboards, are discrete points of light, or basically very small light bulbs. Looked at directly, they glare. OLED-based lights emit light evenly across a thin panel of glass, producing more diffuse light than an LED does. Manufacturers say the two technologies complement each other and some lighting designers have created prototypes of systems that incorporate both. A conference room, for instance, may have OLED panels across the ceiling, with LED spotlights over the conference table. In the display industry, OLED emerged ten years ago as a brighter face for car stereos. More recently, it has been used in cellphones. But manufacturers are finding it difficult to use OLED in larger color screens of computers and TVs. That's because three types of organic material—to make the colors red, green and blue that, when blended, can form all colors on a display—must be deposited on a substrate. Getting those materials aligned is a challenge that manufacturers have mastered only in small areas. Lighting manufacturers, working with one material to make white or variants of white, don't face as difficult a challenge. Even so, they need to find a cheaper manufacturing process than display makers because consumer expectations for the price of lighting is far lower than for phones, computer monitors and TVs. GE's research unit is developing a manufacturing processes for OLED lights in which the organic material is placed on a substrate in a roll-type process similar to the way a newspaper is printed. GE is aiming to reduce manufacturing costs to about $4 a square foot, a spokesman said. It also needs to increase OLED lifespans to 5,000 hours per product before it can consider manufacturing in bulk. "We have to get the life up to compete with fluoroscent technology," said Anil Duggan, an OLED scientist at GE Research in Niskayuna, NY. With low-energy consumption and long lifetime, the first OLED lighting applications will be in so-called "install and forget" places, where lights that last for a long time are valued, such as grocery-store freezers or the "fasten seat belt" sign on an airplane, manufacturers say. Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303341904575576210769923180.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews#ixzz13aU79yU2 -- ======================================== George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
