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Thin, Flat LEDs
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a story about how a company called OMRON has developed a totally flat light source which might give traditional LED's a run for their money." And reader ekarjala points to an article in the EE Times about thin, organic LEDs.
Here's the text:
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Omron Corporation (Headquarters: Kyoto; CEO: Yoshio Tateisi) has announced the development of "flat light source" technology aimed to become a new form of LED illumination.
Employment of LED's in such applications as train car brake lights, signals, and displays began in recent years from the viewpoint of energy consumption and in the not-too-distant future they are expected to displace current lighting sources in the average household. The challenges of this kind of LED illumination are considered to be further improving LED brightness and realizing performance comparable with the price.
Incorporating characteristics of low-profile/large surface area/uniformity not found in lighting sources up until now (light bulbs, fluorescent lamps, present LED's), Omron has developed "flat light source" technology. Taking full advantage of its small size/long service life, features inherent to the LED, the "flat light source" will be positioned to realize future unrestricted illumination such as "wall-mounted light" and "portable light."
Using light wave control technology of the currently marketed DR-LED as a base, a precise optics design was implemented for optical beam dispersement to compartmentalize more space, and by doing so increasing the amount of surface area. The light emitting surface area is 30mm x 30mm with a thickness of 6mm, giving it about 50 times more illumination surface area than a typical bullet-type LED of the same thickness. If a bullet-type LED were to be created to match the same amount of illumination surface area, the thickness would have to be between 1/10th and 1/5th greater. Moreover, this technology mixes three colors (blue, green, red) into a single "flat light source," thus making any color possible, something that has proven to be very difficult for light bulbs and fluorescent light.
The scope of applications for the "flat light source" include those which the LED has already advanced into such as train car brake lights, signals and displays. Combining several "flat light source" units together creates enough illumination for wall-mounted light or portable light and its compact size makes it ideal for narrow locations like walls and columns. Plus, color can be freely adjusted making it a truly full color lighting source.
Hereafter, Omron will accelerate the move toward illumination by the low energy consumption contributing LED, and with this newly developed technology as a base, strive to bring the "flat light source" to commercialization.
Here's a Better link to the story on Omron's web site.
And, "a company called Omron"? Have you not heard of Omron? They're just one of the biggest companies in controllers and industrial automation.
"A company called OMRON" the article says in a distant tone. But please let me add that OMRON is a rather well known consumer brand in Japan. It is a small KYOTO based company that has done many innovations with consumer network products during the last decade. It's exciting to see a middle-sized company come up with something this promising. Proves that size doesn't matter as much as will...(Don't pull that last sentence out of context will you)
"6EQUJ5"
How about a link without MySQL and PHP . . . .
Try Japan Corporate News Net
Coutesy of Google News . . . .
It says they are '50% lower in weight and thickness' than other devices. This doesn't equate to 'totally flat' which I imagined to be a matter of a few molecules thick or perhaps as thick as an organic cell. A light emmitting device as thin as 1 organic cell would be pretty impressive stuff as one would be able to layer it onto pretty much anything and I imagine would be pretty much transparent -- like the thin membranes in onions.
Powered by onion juice.
If this is the same Omron hat has been making blood pressure measuring equipment and thermometers (among other things) then this is not just yesterdays news. It's last decade's..
These folks have been making top notch equipment featuring the LEDs in question for ages now...
/. Where the truth
NE asia online
omron technics
Very interesting. I am currently working on a project with a company that is using LumiLeds for a portable light. Being that these LEDS are very small and have about 120 Lumens a piece (not sure how many are in one bank on the light since Im not doing the engineering portion of the development, only the software for the control). If these things are as small as the Lumileds (the picture shows a scale compared to some coin/button, which is a little smaller that the Lumileds with the optics in place), or as bright, this might be a nice alternative. The companies web site was /. already, anyone have any information on this?
The press release on Omron's web site gives more information, including a diagram that shows how the device functions. It appears to be a central LED device surrounded by a Fresnel mirror, with the mirror cavity filled by what I would presume to be a material similar to fiber-optic cladding. Light emitted from the LED is reflected off the surface of the cavity-fill material, then bounces off the Fresnel mirror, which focuses the light into a reasonably unidirectional beam; a single unit is 30mm on a side, with a thickness of 6mm.
how impatient are you people? A site is NOT slashdotted just because you have to wait 20 seconds for the server to fill your request.
Oh yeah - this isn't a "flat LED", it's a neat little package of LED light mixer and reflector - it looks like a really nice product.
That was classic intercourse!
Sanyo thinks its oled's will be ready for production in a year. Here is their prototype 15 inch oled display made with >a href=http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/display/sanyo Flat.jhtml>Kodak's technology.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
The reflector is an implementation of a fresnel lens, invented in 1822 by a French Physicist named Augustin Fresnel. Initially used in lighthouse lenses, and more recently used in things like overhead projectors and thin magnifying surfaces you see on the back of RVs. The fresnel shape comes from taking the original lens or reflector and cutting it into concentric rings. Then making each ring thinner, but leaving the original curve so that most of the light is reflected in parallel beams.
No they don't.
If you want red light, then red LEDs are more efficent than creating white light and throwing away the non-red parts,
but as of 2002, low pressure sodium was still the most energy efficent lighting source known to man.
I haven't checked recently, but last year the break down was something like this;
Lumens/Watt Light Source
100-190 low pressure Sodium (HID)
50-150 High pressure Sodium (HID)
60-140 Metal Halides (HID)
20-60 mercury vapor (HID)
85-95 32 watt T8 fluorescent
60-65 standard F40T12 cool white fluorescent
48-60 compact fluorescents
45-55 Super bright Red/Orange LED
35-45 Super bright Green LED
20 T3 tubular halogen
15-25 bright white LED
5-25 Halogen
17 standard 100 watt incandescent
6 incandescent night light bulb (7w)
6w incandescent flashlight bulbs
Of course, LEDs have a lot of other nice features, like toughness, long life, and a better failure mode. (They get dimmer with time, rather than suddenly burning out.)
-- this is not a
getting more than a few thousand hours (operation before half-life) out of the blue is a problem at the moment. And a year is 8760 hours.
PDPs have similar problems with phospor lifetimes differing for RGB, which is why any unused portions of a PDP are sent the average of the rest of the screen's intensity so it all wears evenly.
The white LED is actually a blue LED.
Blue LEDs only came around when the right formulation was engineered.
They emit some ultraviolet light, which finds them an application as white LEDs when surrounded by flourescent material that fills in the rest of the spectrum.
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