[Lighting Fair] Latest OLED Lights Emerge at Exhibition

Mar 4, 2009 21:05 Tetsuo Nozawa, Nikkei Electronics

Some OLED lighting devices were exhibited along with LED lamps at Lighting Fair 2009, an exhibition of lighting technologies and equipment that runs from March 3 to 6, 2009, at Tokyo Big Sight.

Demonstration of transparent OLED light

The Research Institute for Organic Electronics (RIOE) set up a booth focusing on OLED lighting. It exhibited OLED lights with various designs. One of them is a prototype panel with a high luminance of 5,000cd/m² and a low power consumption of 15W. The panel has a luminous efficiency of "15lm/W, which is equivalent to that of an incandescent bulb," according to RIOE.

In addition, RIOE exhibited an OLED light composed of nearly transparent parts except for its wiring. Its transparency is 70-75%, according to the institute. RIOE also prototyped an OLED lighting device that can be hung from the ceiling. It has a color temperature of 5,300K and a color rendering index (general color rendering index or Ra) of 80-85.

Meanwhile, an OLED light jointly developed by NEC Lighting Ltd and RIOE was exhibited in NEC Lighting's booth.

Lumiotec Inc is the only exhibitor that has announced the schedule to ship samples of the product on display. It is a company jointly established by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, Rohm Co Ltd, Toppan Printing Co Ltd and Junji Kido, professor at Yamagata University.

Lumiotec plans to build a plant in Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, by fall 2009 and start shipping samples. At the exhibition, the company exhibited a 1.9mm-thick panel manufactured using R&D equipment.

Separately from Lumiotec, Rohm exhibited a variety of OLED lights.

"Unlike LED lighting devices, OLED lights will not cause eye strain even even if you stare at them," Rohm said.

Panasonic Electric Works Co Ltd exhibited the thinnest panel of all the panels displayed at the event. It has a thickness of only 1mm. The company exhibited several panels with different color temperatures, including one with a high color rendering index of 94 and a color temperature of 6,000K, which is equivalent to that of sunlight.

"(OLED lights will become widespread) as supplemental lighting within the next couple of years, but it may take about 10 years before they are commercialized as main lighting," Panasonic said.

As for overseas manufacturers, Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands exhibited the Philips Lumiblade. The Lumiblade is the brand name of its OLED lights announced in 2008. The product exhibited this time was manufactured at a plant that was recently built in Aachen, Germany.

"We have overcome problems such as dark spots caused by luminance variability and manufactured the largest panel," said Philips Electronics Japan Ltd, the company's Japanese unit.

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