Slashdot Mirror
GE Reaches OLED Milestone
swordboy writes "General Electric recently announced the largest and most efficient OLED panel ever created. The 24 inch square panel emits 1200 lumens with a power consumption of about 80 watts - on par with today's incandescent bulbs. This represents the first fruit from the NIST project with ECD Ovonics. The ultimate goal is a cheap, flexible display and lighting technology that can function with an efficiency of 100 lumens per watt. This would make great wallpaper." (And, I hope, a great backlight for laptops.)
I think it would make great contact lenses!
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Well, if there were no market and no clamor it would be called basic research. Often people can't figure out the use for things until after they exist. For example, lasers - when lasers were invented nobody had a good idea of what they would be used for. Today, they're ubiquitous. Likewise, regular LEDs. At one point HP was trying to decide whether they should continue research on LEDs. Marketing said "no - you'll never be able to have them compete with little lightbulbs" Bill Hewlett said "Go do it" and made a huge market for HP
However, in this case, the uses are obvious - back lights for LCD screens come to mind immediately. Replacements for basic lightbulbs as well. LEDs are currently produced as little specks. In order to replace a high wattage bulb you have to team a number of them together. This is expensive. This process would turn out SHEETS of light emitting material. Also, efficiency. Current lightbulbs (and the prototype panel) produce about 15 lumens per watt - they expect to push the technology to 100 lumens per watt. This, coupled with longevity and a low cost to manufacture will drive existing lightbulbs and compact flourescents off the market. There are gaps that exist that the technology is filling
And, I hope, a great backlight for laptops.
Actually, they would make up the main part of the screen assembly. OLEDs show color, as well as producing light (hence there will no longer be a need for a backlight).
That's good that they are winning the efficiency battle, but if "OLEDs begin to fade after 3,000-to-4,000 hours" vs LCDs which "generally have a life expectancy of around 100,000 hours", then we are still very much in the interesting-but-not-quite-useable stage as far as computing is concerned. However, they seem to be fine as light bulb replacements, especially if production costs are low. Note that my figures are from an article from August 2003. Anyone have more recent statistics?
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
Edison's first bulb >>> 1.4 lumens per watt
s /L B26efficient.htm
Modern 60 Watt bulb >>> 960 lumens
from here
http://www.ysartglass.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Bulb
.
OLEDs die.
I was under the assumption that this was the main reason holding OLED displays back. Now it would seem that the panel described here is only for lighting purposes (white light only, no colors or even pixels for that matter), but presumably it will still die or at least dim after a few thousand hours of use.
I recognize that this is not a major problem with cell phone displays and such, but if you plan on building the lighting of your house with these, you won't be too happy if next year or the year after that you get only 300 lumens instead of the promised 1200.
The semiconductor industry hadthe same liftime problems in its development of Gallium, Germanum and Silicon as substrates. This was found to be a problem of controlling impurities in a precise manner. Oxygen is usually the culprit. Same for Organic Semiconductors (OLED) tech.
Because Oled's can be used as power efficent computer monitors( ie laptop monitors), and televisions. It definately has applications in mobile military functions (that computer screen thing again). It promises to be extremely cheap because they can produce it in huge sheets like construction paper. It has the ability to be extremely flexible, as in saran wrap. Also, OLEDs are are brightness adjustable. Sodium lamps throw out 10's of thousands of lumens with no way to dim it. ------- I am excited about these Oleds.
I remember seeing an HDR display at siggraph, it was 30 times brighter than any commercially available display technology while producing a black that is 10 times darker. They used an array of bright LEDs behind the monitor.
..the ratio is 60,000:1 from the darkest to the lightest portion of the screen. Compare this to the 600:1 contrast ratio LCD monitors that are offered currently.
If you don't know anything about HDR, check out this information from Siggraph 2003.
Soon, you may not want to render directly into the sun, you may go blind.
but 75000 lumens would seem to be a bit overdoing it for a 8'x8' room.
Net sa best, mar it koe minder
no, he uses the fake house to play Duke Nukem Forever...
Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul. -Joe Satriani
I think a more apt analogy would be them announcing "a new quantum computer on par with todays 486".
Its not the fact that they are matching old technology, its that the new technlogy is getting mature enough to start competing.
I think you meant 'per square foot of wall', right? And did you take into account 4, 5, or 6 of the faces of a cube? Minus windows and doors?
The amount of light this would put out would be enormous. Figuring about half a million lumens (which are not exactly a measurement of intensity, like lux or footcandles would be) you're looking at the equivalent of around 120 of those 100W fluorescent tubes. That kind of light is what lights an entire large department store like K-Mart, Best Buy, Staples or Media Play to appreciable brightness. If all that light were concentrated upon one spot, that spot would be something around 500 times brighter than a bright white cloud on a sunny day at noon. (The cloud would be 3,500 footlambert, or 1,114 candela/square foot) The darkest object you would be able to see with that in your vision (assuming your eyes could adjust to such intense light levels) would still be brighter than daylight. You would pretty much go blind instantly when you flipped the light switch. But you could light up an entire department store / street with it.