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GE Announces OLED Manufacturing Breakthrough
bughunter writes "Today GE announced the successful demonstration of the world's first roll-to-roll manufactured organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting devices (press release). This demonstration is a key step toward making OLEDs and other high-performance organic electronics products at dramatically lower costs than what is possible today. The green crowd is thrilled as well. Personally, as the parent of a 3-year-old technophile, I'm dreading the animated cereal boxes." Now can I get my Optimus Keyboard for less than $1,299?
The demonstration of a low-cost, roll-to-roll process for OLED lighting represents the successful completion of a four-year, $13 million research collaboration among GE Global Research, Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENER) and the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The goal of the collaboration was to demonstrate a cost-effective system for the mass production of organic electronics products such as flexible electronic paper displays, portable TV screens the size of posters, solar powered cells and high-efficiency lighting devices. ECD Senior Vice President Nancy Bacon said, "This program was a major step in developing high volume roll-to-roll manufacturing for OLEDs and other organic semiconductor devices. The success of this program is testimony to the effectiveness of NIST's advanced technology program model, and our 20-year history of pioneering research in roll-to-roll technology. We currently are utilizing this technology to mass produce our flexible, durable and lightweight UNI-SOLAR brand solar laminates. ECD looks forward to continuing collaboration with GE to further develop this technology for future commercialization." The success is in the creation of a manufacturing process, the strip was the demonstration of its success.
Demented But Determined.
"Personally, as the parent of a 3-year-old technophile, I'm dreading the animated cereal boxes
Ok, then don't buy them.
Personally, as the parent of a 3-year-old technophile, I'm dreading the animated cereal boxes.
In another twenty years there will likely not be a surface anywhere that isn't animated. The animated billboards and signs are already here.
As if having blinking shiney flashey crap on the internet isn't bad enough now we're subjected to it in meatspace.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Most of the linked articles talk about "new technology for lighting" as in panel lights for rooms and such. Are these panels being manufactured for display tech too? Or is the refresh rate not fast enough yet?
In other words, it's one thing to demonstrate a prototype product, but an entirely other thing to demonstrate how you actually plan to mass produce that product, which this is!
Of course, it's yet another thing to actually produce your production equipment and drive adoption among manufacturers, but this announement is still one major step beyond most next-gen display announcements (SED, I'm looking at you...).
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
I would be excited ... if there were more details convincing me this is a 'breakthrough.' That word gets thrown around a lot these days.
If the announcement came out of some startup, it would be questionable, but it came from General Electric Research in Schenectady, NY. That's an organization over a century old, and a big chunk of the electrical industry was invented there. If they say they have a production process for making something in quantity, they probably do.
Organic, before the marketing hype took over it, means 'carbon based'. That is not to say that any pesticides or insecticides were not used in the production of this OLED. But the Organic in OLED means that the base of the LED is a polymer with a carbon based composite deposited on it. The purpose 4-year project appears to have been to find a significantly more efficient (roll to roll) way of printing the organic compound to the polymer. So while the creation of the tool took four years, it could mean the ability to greatly increase production and reduce costs significantly.
What makes OLED's 'green' is that they don't require back lighting like LCD displays. Which means you can generate images for a fraction of the electrical draw.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
OLED = organic LIGHT EMITTING diode
Technoli
So called "interferometric modulator" displays (IMOD for short) would be what you are looking for. It'll be a while before they are printed onto cereal boxes, but the potential is there.
STFU about slashdot bias.
THAT is going to save more than a few barrels of oil. After all, even /. posters burn more power on lighting than on backlighting, monitor tans notwithstanding.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
> Personally, as the parent of a 3-year-old technophile, I'm dreading the animated cereal boxes.
I can see the counter-adverts on the ordinary boxes now "GE Free". And on the animated boxes "Cereal may contain nuts and batteries"
What I have been wanting for some time is something to brighten the sheer boredom of riding in a corporate lift. (I accept that stores and the like will batter a captive audience with ads so they are tortured into compliance by the time they arrive. Shut eyes, turn up iPod.)
The idea is to have something other than, say, a big 13 drifting past to tell you you have passed floor 13. I'd like a small 13, but some nice elevation dependent pictures. Earth and grass for the ground floor. Apples or tweety-birds for the next floor and so on. Eagles well up. And of course, space junk for senior managerial levels. Top floor a galaxy, with a warning that they are only 4% ordinary matter.
But I am bothered about the basement images. I'd rather avoid drippy caves, and anything with religious overtones. Suggestions anyone?
Exactly. In mechanical engineering terms, this is what we call the beta prototype - the prototype created with the real-world manufacturing process described in the manufacturing plan. The expensive one-of-a kind stuff is an alpha (like concept cars, etc.), which are usually hand-made. I would expect they'll have these mass produced quite soon, and at an affordable price for many applications.
Remember, if their plan didn't show expectations of profit (i.e.: a sellable product), they wouldn't be researching it. They're a company, they're out to make money. Luckily, in this case, they're trying to do it by developing a responsible technology.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
If they say they have a production process for making something in quantity, they probably do.
The OP wasn't arguing that GE doesn't have the production process. He/she just wasn't convinced that the process was "a breakthrough." The photo I saw looked like the LEDs were about 1 inch square each, and the attached article suggested that they were about twice as efficient per lumen as incandescent lighting. The efficiency of incandescent lighting isn't exactly hard to beat.
Would you consider a new process for manufacturing buggy whips to be a "breakthrough?" I'm not saying it's NOT a breakthrough, (obviously this could lead to amazing display technology) but I agree with the point the OP was trying to make: it would be nice to have more details.
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One of the things we've found out is that no HD LCD, plasma, or rear-projection DLP displays are as good as a broadcast reference CRT monitor in terms of luminance dynamic range, viewing angle, or color gamut. Only front-projection DLPs seem to be able to match good quality CRTs, but then you need all that space for the projection.
OLEDs have a real chance of matching or even beating CRTs in a true "flat panel" form factor.
And I also like the idea of using OLED rolls as wallpaper so we can have 7,680 × 4,320 pixel video on the wall (which will, of course, need 22.2 surround sound (UHDTV).