CombOLED
Solid state lighting is a fascinating research field which brought up the revolutionary breakthrough technology of inorganic LEDs during the last decade. These are now migrating into the general lighting field. A new development route is already identified, with organic light emitting devices (OLEDs) in large area and nm architectures being complementary to inorganic point sources.
These organic light emitting devices for lighting purposes are expected to have broad market opportunities due to their properties. They can act as nearly two-dimensional diffuse light sources as well as signage applications. They have the potential to offer transparency and flexibility, opening up the possibility of creating completely new applications. In addition, as efficiencies above 50 lm/W are targeted, these novel light sources also have the potential to decrease the global energy consumption.
Similar efficiencies and lifetime compared to existing solution is a pre-requisite for new lighting technologies. A staircase improvement from today’s level towards 50 lm/W and 5000 h lifetime of large area tiles can be expected, which will be sufficient for first niche applications soon.
However, an effective market introduction of OLEDs for lighting and signage will become the lighting revolution in the future as soon as the cost structure is competitive and unique selling points like transparency are explored.
Therefore, one of the major challenges that is still ahead is the manufacturing costs. If no breakthroughs are made in terms of new low-cost processes, OLED technology will not enter the market in large volume, even if the performance would allow competition.
The second issue to be addressed refers to the uniqueness of OLEDs for lighting. Besides the advanced form factor of OLED lighting panels, further unique selling attributes must be developed. An area of particular interest could be the creation of transparent devices which could open new perspectives for lighting and signage.
The CombOLED project, a European Commission funded RTD project within the Seventh Framework Programme under the ICT 2007 3.2 Objective "Organic and large area electronics; visualisation and display technologies", will address the above-mentioned objectives.
The goal of CombOLEDis to combine new device structures, advantageous manufacturing approaches and less complex materials with the aim to achieve cost effective OLED lighting solutions.
The cost reduction, together with transparency as a device feature, will enable a huge penetration of the organic light-emitting device (OLED) technology into the lighting market. This will help European lighting companies to maintain their leadership in this market at worldwide level.
The major goals that should enable CombOLED objectives are related to the application fields and can be summarized as follows:
- A new substrate technology that is more cost effective than today’s standard Indium-Tin-Oxide coated high-end glass.
- Stack technology that combines non-complex and cost effective deposition methods with a high device performance based on either small molecule or polymer materials or combinations of them.
- Deposition methods that are able to deposit layers of organic materials at low cost/high speed.
- A backside contact (top contact) that is transparent to the visible light and thus enables transparent devices.
To achieve these goals, the CombOLED consortium consists of 7 partners (Osram Opto Semiconductors, Siemens, CEA LETI, University of Valencia, Saint-Gobain Recherche, PPML Lighting Solutions and Schreiner Group) located in 4 countries all over Europe and resembles an OLED supply chain from substrate supply via device manufacturing to application design and prototype realization. The CombOLED project has a total budget of 7 million euros to accelerate the progress in the field of organic light emitting devices in large area and nm-thin architectures through investment in research and development.
For further information, please contact: Dr. Karsten Heuser or consult the project website http://www.comboled-project.eu.