OLED100.eu Project Manager: OLED is doing the final sprint

Organic light emitting diodes (OLED) are impacting the display and lighting market. Marie Freebody dialogue Stefan Grabowski, about the commercialization of this technology road.

Respondent profile: Stefan Grabowski works at the PHILPS research laboratory in Germany. His research focuses on physics and OLED devices. Grabowski is the European OLED100.eu project manager, the project is funded by the European Union to establish research cooperation program, is designed for the European lighting industrial development of OLED lighting products, the project participants include 14 units in six countries.

OLED100.eu project manager, PHILPS research laboratory researcher Stefan Grabowski

Reporter: can you explain how OLED works?

Grabowski:OLED is a solid-state lighting device, the principle of which is similar to its inorganic brother (LED). A typical OLED consists of two layers of organic material deposited on a transparent substrate. A positive electrode on the top and bottom, in the middle of an electron transport material, a bit like a sandwich. The first layer is responsible for the emission and transmission of electrons from the cathode, and the other is responsible for conducting holes from the anode. When a voltage passes through these layers, the electron hole pairs combine to give off light.

OLED structure

Different from the inorganic light-emitting diode, the structure of OLED is easy to achieve high color gamut graphics or uniform white light, the OLED can be combined into a large area of layers.

Reporter: why OLED R & D so important?

Grabowski:OLED has the potential to become energy-efficient bulbs. It is well known that more than 1/4 of Europe's electricity consumption comes from lighting, so energy saving alternatives is a very important research and development field. An important goal of the OLED100.eu project is to manufacture more than 100 lm/W OLED products.

When high efficiency OLED can mass production, the cost will be reduced, they can be used in a variety of lighting occasions. OLED to provide users with a new choice, this lighting is flat, you can do a large area. They are thin enough to be transparent or curved. OLED brightness and color are adjustable, you can design a new decorative lights to achieve personalized living environment.

Reporter: what is the main application of OLED? When will it be possible?

Grabowski: there are two main areas of application: display and lighting, small OLED display has been widely used in mobile devices, such as mobile phones, MP3 and personal electronic assistant. Large display is also gradually entering the market, such as SONY released a 27 inch OLED TV, plans to market in 2009.

OLED lighting has completely different characteristics. These OLED are not composed of small pixels, but a large area of emission, so the efficiency of this component must be high. The first OLED lighting appears in some special application areas, but more special products will appear in the near future.

Our goal is to install on the wall or ceiling, so you can get a large emission area. Transparent OLED can be installed on the window, let the sun through the day, at night, their own light, this is a wonderful thing.

Reporter: how do you predict the penetration of OLED on the market?

Grabowski:OLED lighting is on the eve of commercialization. In the German Ingo Maurer there is a OLED lamp, which is designed by OSRAM. PHILPS offers a variety of OLED shape and color solutions, the program with plug and play function. There is no production, but that OLED is ready to enter the market. This technology in progress, there will be more applications in the future, from home lighting to office lighting, from lighting to design-oriented lighting, etc..

Reporter: what is the biggest progress recently? What are the biggest obstacles?

Grabowski: the efficiency of white light OLED growing, has been able to compete with compact fluorescent lamps. The life span of OLED has increased to more than ten thousand hours, and has been the most attractive option for some special applications.

But for conventional lighting, the efficiency and life of OLED still need to be greatly improved, the size of the light-emitting area still needs to be expanded, so as to give full play to its advantages. Therefore, the production process and device structure need to enhance the uniformity and stability of the voltage in the whole region. From the commercial point of view, large-scale production equipment and processes must be further developed and installed.

Reporter: what will be the breakthrough in the future?

Grabowski: This is hard to predict, the purpose of the OLED100.eu project is to make the efficiency of more than 100 OLED, life in more than 100 thousand hours, the size of up to 100 x 100 cm. We look forward to improving the lifetime of blue phosphorescent OLED.

Introduction to the "OLED100.eu" program

In October 2008, a team of experts organized by the industry and college conducted a comprehensive research project ---OLED100.eu ", the goal of the project is to accelerate the development of organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology in Europe, the formation of efficient OLED in science and technology based on the application of the general lighting as soon as possible. The EU seventh framework agreement for the research project provides a research budget of 12 million 500 thousand euros (about $16 million 500 thousand).

The "OLED100.eu" project started in 2004, completed at the beginning of this year, successfully carried out research in lighting applications in the OLED, the white OLED in the initial brightness 1000 cd/m2 luminous efficiency of 50.7 lm/W (see the details) and life more than 10 thousand hours, in order to establish the foundation of organic lighting