High efficiency flat light source could be the end for the light bulb

Gizmag ^ | 4/19/2006 | Staff

[WaterDragon]

I've been tracking this research for a while and am so excited about it. I want that kind of light in my home soon as possible! It should create a lovely ambience!

[Glenn]

It should create a lovely ambience!

Good. There is nothing worse than an ugly ambience.

[whd23]

Fridges with controls like the Enterprise!

Wouldn't there just be one big button: "Keep all my food cold."

[P-40]

"Keep all my food cold."

That and a button for warp speed cooling in the beer compartment.

[Squawk 8888]

Another one where I'd suggest blaming the writer. A transformer at the output of an oscilator would do the job.

[TKDietz]

"100 percent efficiency and only 3 times a efficient as an incandescent light bulb. Yeah right it's not adding up."

The better fluorescent lights you can buy today at the hardware store are a good five or six times as efficient as a standard incandescent bulb. A standard 60 or 100 watt incandescent bulb will produce a good bit less than 20 lumens per watt, probably closer to 15. A good fluorescent light with an efficent electronic ballast will produce closer to 100 lumens per watt. If these OLEDS will only get to where they are three times as efficient as standard incandescent bulbs then they won't get anywhere close to as efficient as your standard 32 watt T8 shoplight with an electronic ballast. All of this is better than Thomas Edison's first lamp that supposedly produced about 1.4 lumens per watt. A 100% efficiency though would be in the several hundred lumens per watt range.

[Squawk 8888]

Even better- imagine building these into a pair of goggles and using it to mix images with the local environment. Add CCD to the frame and you could even make the images respond to the real world.

[truemiester]

WOW!
This is cool stuff.

Techno ping me!

[gaijin]

They say in the beginning it's going to be expensive, so we'll see the first applications in interior lighting panels (like in the legroom area) of upper-end Mercedes, or deep within Luis Vuitton hand-bags, or whatever.

[truemiester]

I believe the efficiencies are due to getting the most light from materials available and the second statement about energy usage.

[Verginius Rufus]

They shouldn't rush this. They need to make sure there are no side effects harmful to snail darters, spotted owls, ivory-billed woodpeckers, or prothonotary warblers.

[relictele]

AHA! And they all laughed at me when I attended Flat Light School!!!

Flat Light = chemical lightstick after Hillary accidentally sits on it in your car.

[Paul Ross]

Funding for the research came from the Department of Energy and Universal Display Corp., which holds exclusive licensing rights to the group's OLED inventions.

What are the odds any of this will wind up made in the USA? And we paid for the R&D....

Note the small size of the corporate partner here:

	>	Corporate Directory

Universal Display Corporation is a world leader in the development of innovative organic light emitting device (OLED) technology for use in flat panel displays, lighting and other opto-electronic applications. Since our founding in 1994, Universal Display Corporation’s mission has been to provide state-of-the-art OLED technology and services to OLED manufacturers to enhance their products’ features and competitive advantage. Through transformational research and advanced engineering, we have developed proprietary OLED technology that may provide dramatically enhanced display performance at lower costs than today's liquid crystal displays (LCDs). For next-generation organic electronics, we continue to push the state-of-the-art with cutting-edge research and development.

Today, Universal Display Corporation owns or has exclusive license rights to or sole rights to sublicense an intellectual property portfolio that contains approximately 750 issued and pending patents worldwide. Covering technology developed by our technology team at Universal Display Corporation, our academic research partners at Princeton University and the University of Southern California, as well as by Motorola, Inc., our patents reflect a broad array of OLED technologies, materials and processes.

Technology Transfer and Licensing. We engage in patent and technology licensing, technology research and development, and technology assistance, to deliver highly innovative technology solutions to manufacturers and users of flat panel displays and other opto-electronic products. Universal Display Corporation has several strategic business partners who are focusing on the development and production of OLEDs using our proprietary technologies, including our PHOLED™ phosphorescent OLED technology for power efficiency gains and our TOLED® transparent and top-emitting OLED technology for top-emission active-matrix applications. These include AU Optronics Corporation, DuPont Displays, Samsung SDI Co., Ltd., Seiko Epson Corporation, Sony Corporation, Tohoku Pioneer Corporation, and Toyota Industries Corporation. Universal Display Corporation has also licensed its OVPD™ organic vapor phase deposition technology to Aixtron AG for the commercialization of OVPD equipment for the OLED industry. To learn more, please contact us.

PHOLED™ Material Sales. Universal Display Corporation is unique in offering a family of proprietary PHOLED phosphorescent OLED materials that complement our breakthrough PHOLED technology. We produce our high-efficiency PHOLED materials using proven manufacturing practices and established quality management systems through our longstanding relationship with PPG Industries, Inc. These PHOLED materials are available for evaluation and use in commercial production from Universal Display Corporation. Click here for additional information.

Flexible Display Development. Based on key innovations from the late 1990’s, Universal Display Corporation is a leading developer of flexible OLED technology. One of our major next-generation technology initiatives is our development of FOLEDs® flexible OLED technology that can enable thinner, lighter-weight and bendable display products for use in a variety of existing applications, as well as novel concepts such as our Universal Communication Device. Our work in this area is partially supported by research contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense. In addition, we recently became a founding member of the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University to support the development of manufacturing infrastructure for flexible displays. 

OLED Lighting Initiative. White OLED lighting using Universal Display Corporation’s proprietary PHOLED, TOLED and FOLED technologies represents a true breakthrough for next-generation solid-state lighting applications. In another major initiative for the future, Universal Display Corporation is a leader in the development of white OLED technology for lighting, displays and other opto-electronic applications, with record-breaking peak power efficiencies and excellent white color quality. To meet the requirements of the general lighting industry, the U.S. Department of Energy has established a Solid State Lighting initiative to accelerate the development of novel lighting technologies, and it is supporting, through research contracts, various aspects of Universal Display Corporation’s technology development in this area.

With approximately 50 employees, Universal Display Corporation is headquartered in Ewing, New Jersey in a 40,000 square-foot facility. At this uniquely designed location, we perform continued leading-edge technology research and development, fabricate engineering prototypes, and provide technical assistance to our partners. 

Copyright © 2001-06, Universal Display Corporation. All rights reserved.

[Paulus Invictus]

And it was an American company that invented/discovered oled technology---at the research labs of Eastman Kodak. I keep waiting for the oled flat screen for TV, for digital cameras, (another Kodak invention), iPods and camera phones. Once you have seen oled demonstrated, everything else looks second rate. Bet y'all didn't know that Kodak also invented the first ever VCR (but didn't take advantage of the opportunity, more's the pity). There are a lot of Kodak bashers on FR, but I defend their research power, their ingenuity and inventiveness.

[Plutarch]

High efficiency flat light source could be the end for the light bulb..

It is mind boggling that we are still using this 1878 invention, essentially unchanged.

[50sDad]

Wouldn't there just be one big button: "Keep all my food cold."

[PICARD]

"Fridge: Food, cold."

{/PICARD]

[Tokra]

But where is the missing link between this and the incandescent light bulb? Another nail in the coffin of evolution! {/Sarcasm off}

Ooops - wrong thread!

[Tokra]

AND THE WHOLE WORLD WILL BE LIT UP FOREVER!!!

You've just described Ted Kennedy's dream world!

[Tokra]

But I don't use fluorscents in my home because the light quality sucks.

The newer ones give off a much closer to sunlight color than do incandescent or the old fashioned fluorescent.

[P-40]

They say in the beginning it's going to be expensive

We are just starting to look at using some basic products along this line. Here is a random webpage that has what we are looking into:

http://www.theledlight.com/

Basic info:

http://www.toolbase.org/techinv/techDetails.aspx?technologyID=210