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.)

Ahem..

This would make great wallpaper."

I can't wait to play Doom in a real house ;-)

Re:Ahem..

no, he uses the fake house to play Duke Nukem Forever...

Re:Ahem..

If its that thin and light, I'd happily just mount it as the side of my case; how convenient would that be?

RTFA

It says 80 watts. You think that might mean something?

Hmm, organic LED?

Please explain... does this mean they spray pesticides on regular LEDs?

Better yet...

I think it would make great contact lenses!

I've RTFAed, but I can't see...

How does the output of 1200 lumens from 80 watts input compare to a conventional bulb's output? To a fluorescent bulb's output?

Re:I've RTFAed, but I can't see...

Edison's first bulb >>> 1.4 lumens per watt

Modern 60 Watt bulb >>> 960 lumens

from here

http://www.ysartglass.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Bulbs /L B26efficient.htm

.

Re:I've RTFAed, but I can't see...

A 100 watt incanscent light bulb puts out about 1600 lumens. or ~16 Lumen/watt

OLED 1200l/80w = 15 Lumen/watt

A compact florescent is ~1750l/29w = 60 Lumen/watt

cold cathode tubes are at about 65l/w

So these OLEDs have a long way to go effieciency wise before we get them in our portable computers.

Re:I've RTFAed, but I can't see...

Yes, but in a TFT display you lose close to 90% of your light to the TFT and Liquid Crystal panel. So if your backlights efficiency is 60 lumen/W the total display efficiency is more like 6 lumen/W, even neglecting the the power consumption for the panel..

I may be mistaking an expansion for a rebuttal...

but I don't see how your observation detracts from the parent posters point. Unless the "light box" (I don't know the technical term) that converts the cylindrical CCFL source into one big flat 2D source via diffusion is incredibly lossy you're still dealing with the efficiency of the source itself. LCDs are light shutters. Their emissive efficiency depends on the source of white light. The advantage of tacking light emissive wallpaper on the back of an LCD would lie in its relative simplicity, lighter weight, lack of a high volta ge inverter/ballast, and thinner depth. Until OLED bulb-paper can match the power efficiency of the current design it offers no advantage whatsoever. 6 L/W wont cut it just because it's flat. You'll either get 1/10th the brightness or 1/10 the battery life.

Re:I've RTFAed, but I can't see...

The sad thing is that over the years some stupid measures of light have been invented. I have a degree in physics, yet have never known what a lumen is, because it is not a physicists unit, and probably not an engineers unit either. I assume that it is a marketing unit, as it is often applied to LCD projectors, one of 1800 lumens being said to be much more powerful than one of only 1700, although in fact the difference visually is negligible, and swamped by lamp ageing anyway.

What really matters is that the energy will divide 3 ways, heat (bad), out of band light (UV, very bad, IR just bad) and visible light. (For the pedantic, there may also be a trace of acoustic or RF emissions, but in either case a small fraction of a watt would have such nuisance value that it would not be allowed.) You need to know what fraction of the energy is visible, and the spectral distribution, is it white or an aceptable approximation?

AFAIK, a normal LED can get to about 22% (depending on colour) while a high-efficiency fluorescent can get about 70%, but these figures will have changed since my brain had its last update.

There will be a definite limit imposed by the laws of physics, normal LEDs are hitting this now, and despite what one may read in the press, will not ever replace fluorescents for general lighting. They are not even appropriate for bicycle headlights, for which they are sold, and are utterly inappropraite for car headlights, despite the best efforts of one of the more incompetent European lighting manufacturers. In both cases an optimised gas discharge source of some sort (i.e. fluorescent) would be best, preferably not like these vile headlights with the excessive UV content used by BMW, which surprisingly has not yet landed them in court. (It will.....) In fact they are struggling to get double the efficiency of quartz-halogen, which is only a bit better than normal tungsten. I don't know the physics of an OLED, but it will have a definite limit, and I suspect will not be particularly impressive.

Factor in cost and life, and general use of these things will be a long way off, none of which is intended to denigrate the good work which has gone into the concept in any way. Research like this should be done, the mistake is to allow the marketing men to create expectations which cannot be satisfied due to the physics.

I will be sticking to the highest efficiency miniature fluorescents for my domestic lighting, probably for a long time, but when something which is actually better comes along, I will make the change willingly. It was a no-brainer to replace ordinary tungsten bulbs with fluorescents, it will need a bit of thought next time, because there is not nearly as much scope left for efficiency improvement, since you can't get to 100%.

The ultimate goal

means that it is still a long long wait..

The ultimate goal is to create sheets of paper-thin lighting devices that can be applied to surfaces in a similar way to wallpapering. Moving forward, in order to accomplish this and bring the product to market, GE needs to make the device even more efficient - eventually reach 100 lumens per watt - as well as develop a low-cost production system.

Well...

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).

Needs efficiency AND durability

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 [space.com]. Anyone have more recent statistics?

Re:Needs efficiency AND durability

"But hey, at least its organic."

So is botulism toxin and dioxin and PCB's. Just because something is organic doesn't make it good.

Re:Needs efficiency AND durability

"OLEDs begin to fade after 3,000-to-4,000 hours" vs LCDs which "generally have a life expectancy of around 100,000 hours"

I was under the impression that LCD displays have an indefinite lifespan if the CCFT is accessable for replacement. The average CCFT bulb costs less than $13 from JKL Lamps [jkllamps.com] and is a pretty inexpensive way to keep an LCD monitor going.

Re:Needs efficiency AND durability

Those 100,000 hours were not achieved "at once". I remember when I worked 10 years ago for an LCD manufacturer, how many problems there were initially with durability. Those things need a bit of time.

It's in this context always nice to ask people: "What do you think lasts longer, a car or a lightbulb". The answer is nearly always "a car" allthough it is more or less the same. Let's assume a car drives 100,000 miles, at 50 mph, that makes a lifetime of just 2000 hours. Which isn't much....

Lifespan?

One of the main problems with OLEDs it that they begin to fade after 10,000 hrs or so. Any ideas on how long this panel lasts? The PR piece makes it sound like the only outstanding problems are making it "cheaper" and increasing its output per watt.

Fahrenheit 451

Does this remind anyone of Fahrenheit 451 at all? The houses in the book had walls that were actually like TV's. I can imagine an array of LCD panels that are backlit via this type of technology being used as a wall TV. Imagine [insert FPS of your choice] on a small wall, say 15'x10'...

Flourescents put out 80 lumens per watt

Flourescents easily put out 60 to 90 lumens per watt. Low Pressure Sodium lamps of the sort used for outdoor lighting put out around 180 lumens per watt. So remind me again why NIST is spending our tax dollars developing OLEDs?

Re:Flourescents put out 80 lumens per watt

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.

Re:Flourescents put out 80 lumens per watt

Because unlike any of the other technologies, these things are thin and flexible(in form and function). I don't think you'd find it very easy to wrap a HPS lamp around a barricade divider at an off-ramp, or along the rear bumper of a construction vehicle. You can print an oled in the shapes you want instead of having to put a light behind a mask.

But what about the real problem?

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.

Re:But what about the real problem?

OLEDs die.

I'm pretty sure the first HID (high-intensity discharge) lamps weren't exactly long-lived either, but they're all over the place (in selected applications) now. Besides, if they can make a machine to just spit out OLED lighting sheet by the yard, it'll be mucho cheap.

By the way, if the voltage is comparable to conventional LEDs, high-wattage OLED sheets are going to require completely silly power supplies. Or some sort of series-connected sheet assemblies.

--

A look back...

Often, one has to stop and think where we are with technology, and how far we've come. Considering that this seemingly "advanced" bulb is ages away from the prototypes of Edison and Swan [maxmon.com] and to think where we will be (or where our grandchildren will be), in another 100 years from now, is fascinating.

OLED's

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.

Impact to the environment ?

I wonder how much coal, water and other materials are required to create one clean 80W monitor ;).

Perhaps for High Dynamic Range LCDs?

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 [siggraph.org] from Siggraph 2003.
Soon, you may not want to render directly into the sun, you may go blind.

Hot wallpaper...

The 24 inch square panel emits 1200 lumens with a power consumption of about 80 watts ... This would make great wallpaper.

Let's see, 20W per square foot... 160W per foot of wall (assuming 8' ceilings)... that's around 5kW just for an 8' x 8' room.

They'll need to get the power consumption way down before this is useful for wallpaper.

Re:Hot wallpaper... and a bit bright

but 75000 lumens would seem to be a bit overdoing it for a 8'x8' room.

Re:Hot wallpaper...

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.

OLDE's

Organic Semiconductor tech can use self-organizing and/or assembling nanotech procedures. This uses water and other raws. Using rather than fighting physical self-organizing trends of our Universe seems like a good approach. Don't fight Entropy - Use it.

OLED's

More succinctly: dont't fight Thermodymanics, use it.

A howling environmentalist

Why do GE get all proud about this phrase "with a power consumption of about 80 watts - on par with today's incandescent bulbs". Today's incandescent bulbs which are about 5 times less efficient than compact fluorescents, well hurray hurray for GE, I can't wait until they announce "a new xyz processor on a par with todays 486".

Re:A howling environmentalist

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.

OLED's

This type of thing initially made me wary of including myself. I thought that the subject was somehow involved in the reponses. However, as a psych study, (REAL TV on the Net), this is great.

Now you see me....

Can you say daylight stealth? Cover the bottom of a military jet or helicopter with OLED panels, then emit the same color as the surrounding sky. Or tanks. Or ships. Or....

Kodak, for one, has a fairly new camera with a pretty big (for a camera) OLED display, not to mention a 10x optical lens.

Re:Now you see me....

There was a show on the BBC (perhaps "Science Shack", but at least the same presenter, Adam Hart-Davies... a little more research [google is your friend] shows it was Science Shack, programme 2, http://www3.open.ac.uk/media/image-bank/programmes .asp) in which they went through a few techniques to make yourself invisible. The image from the program in the link above is the "mirrored suit", which when you are in a forest actually kinda works. However, they did actually make a car with an industrial strength active display on one side and cameras on the other side to capture what was behind the vehicle and show it on the screen. Really cool. It worked. As a stationary vehicle it was almost impossible to see (they had "experts" to try and spot it in the forest). However as it moved the vehicle was easier to spot. All in all a really cool attempt to show how such technology does (and does not) work.

Backlight actually better off front-lit?

• (And, I hope, a great backlight for laptops.)

The backlight system on the Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP [nintendo.com] is simply a thin-film LED which coats the 240x160 pixel screen. When the backlight is on, it illuminates the pane which exists between the display layer(s) and the front of the device (or the user's 'eye'). The system is highly effective, and very simple to implement. Better for laptops, too, maybe.

What milestone?

So what makes this invention a milestone? As far as I know a milestone is something that is specified beforehand. For example "the ultimate goal is a cheap, flexible display and lighting technology that can function with an efficiency of 100 lumens per watt" is clearly a milestone and this invention does not reach it.

Organic Light Emitting Case Mods

This is great news for all those case modders out there. Instead of blue neon lighting around the edges, you can cover the entire case in a OLED sheet. Imagine the possibilities!

OLEC - Organic Light Emitting Case.

15

From the original post: "The 24 inch square panel emits 1200 lumens with a power consumption of about 80 watts - on par with today's incandescent bulbs...The ultimate goal is a cheap, flexible display and lighting technology that can function with an efficiency of 100 lumens per watt."

1200 lumens / 80 watts = 15 lumens per watt

Have they met their goal?

Just to add some perspective here...

The 24 inch square panel emits 1200 lumens with a power consumption of about 80 watts - on par with today's incandescent bulbs.

A H7 halogen headlight bulb, which draws 55 Watts of power at ~13 V, produces 1700 lumens. This is at the forefront of incandescent efficiency, producing 31 lumens per Watt, in a capsule that is about 1/2" x 1/4". This OLED is half as efficient, power consumption wise, and ~1/6500 as intense.

When you compare it to gaseous plasma lighting, it looks even worse. A DS2 HID bulb produces ~3100 lumens at 35 Watts. This is about 90 lumens/Watt, almost six times more efficient and nearly 48,000 times as intense.

I realize that these automotive bulbs are designed for something completely different than the OLED panels, but you have to compare these disparate technologies to assess how far the developing technology has to go, to be economically feasible. The reason I brought up the arc lamp, is because it is similar technology to the cold cathode lamps used for current laptop backlighting. True, an OLED display doesn't need backlighting, but it would have to be both more cost and power efficient than the conventional LCD + cold cathode lamp to displace the established technology. With the current state of this technology, it appears as though it still has a very long way to go, just to catch-up to the status quo.

I'm sure that there will be a company that will throw something similar to this into a laptop soon, and people will buy them because it is new and different. Will it be considered better?

Geek 1: "I have this new type of display, that's better than yours because it's OLED"
Geek 2: "Is it on? Why is it so dim?"
Geek 1: "It doesn't need a backlight like yours does and I can read it fine in the dark!"
Geek 2: "It feels like it's radiating heat."
Geek 1: "Yeah maybe, but that might be the 5.7 GHz. Xeon processor. Your laptop doesn't have that!"
Geek 2: "You're right, but I don't need to plug my laptop in all of the time."

With the geek laptops out there like the Alienware ones, I'm sure that the groundwork of expecting a laptop to be tethered to a wall socket has been well laid.

-- Len

A question for the /. crowd

It is kind of OT, but it is still about lighting.

Does anyone use full spectrum lights? Are they worth it?

I get two conflicting messages while reading about the subj on the Internet.

Hurry up!

I hear, with baited breath, all this stuff about OLEDS and how they'll have us get awesome huge displays on our livingroom walls.

I WANT IT RIGHT NOW! GET YOUR ARSES IN GEAR AND GET IT IN MY LIVINGROOM!

I just bought a 37" LCD panel for 4k but I *REALLY* want an 80" panel for the same price.

HURRY UP! PLEASE!

Re:No clamor

Well, there is "no market" or "clamor" for consumer grade 10 gigahertz processors, or terabyte hard disks, but thats not going to stop research into faster processors and larger hard drives. Microsoft might be laughing themselves till they pee and patting themselves on the back for coming up with that "innovation" line, but it does actually happen now and then. And no market for low power LCD displays? Are you insane? With todays laptops you're lucky if you break 2 hours of battery life. A lot of that is powering that backlight behind the display. Cutting the power the display takes will do wonders for battery life. And that there is a market for.

I think there's a market

Don't these things use much less power? Especially since you don't need a backlight? These things would certainly fill a rather large niche, and they could actually end up replacing LCDs where power consumption is key. I think.

Re:No clamor

It fills a great gap, low cost, low power consumption portable displays.

Dunno about you, but a really bright LED display would be much preferable to my dim lcd display on my laptop.

A really bright LED display might be a nice replacement to my burned in plasma tv too! (although i wouldnt call it portable)

You are NOT insightful

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

Re:You are NOT insightful

For example, lasers - when lasers were invented nobody had a good idea of what they would be used for.

I hate to disagree, but laser is one example of a technology that had applications before the technology itself was available!

For example, holography [holophile.com] was invented before the laser itself.

In the early days of holography (1947), they used mercury arc lamps as a source of "coherent" light, but couldn't get very far with it, as it was not nearly coherent enough for the purpose. Development of holography basically stalled until the invention of the laser in 1960

Re:You are NOT insightful

I hate to disagree, but laser is one example of a technology that had applications before the technology itself was available!

The applications may have been there but the inventors weren't aware of them. They were doing basic research. Arthur Schawlow, who was one of the inventors of the laser at Bell Labs, said "We thought it might have some communications and scientific uses, but we had no application in mind. If we had, it might have hampered us and not worked out as well."

Re:No clamor

...no discernable market and no clamor for such a technology.

Ask any architect or interior decorator about the possibilities of light sources which can be embedded in ceilings and walls.

There's your market, right there.

They said that about portable phones.

No, really. They did.

IF (Right tech + right size + right price point) = (convenience) THEN (ubiquity).

Re:What the FUD?

And this is why we don't have a meta discussion page. Because it's all about the money, really. There's too much of it to allow Slashdot [kuro5hin.org] to really be impartial.

But nobody really cares anyway. Herds, the lot of ya.

And I'm posting this AC free, damn the punishment.

Re:What the FUD?

The whole idea is that if you see something enough times you may believe it. So M$ just puts those ads there so your eyes have a glimpse every once and a while.

I kind of agree with you, but considering you dont pay for slashdot (well, you obviously dont, and neither do I), get used to seeing ads about all sorts of things like this. They need the revenue from somewhere and who cares if its M$. There is by far enough M$ bashing on this site to make up for it :D

Re:No clamor

No market? No clamor? Good Lord man, people have been dreaming of inexpensive, high efficiency, nealy infinite lifetime, luminous panels for many, many decades.

In the book that I oft make reference to, Your Engineered House, published in 1964, a book which in many respects advocates older "technologies" as being the most suitable to to the task of supplying housing, he looks forward to a day when luminous panels might be available, as they provide the ultimate engineering solution to indoor lighting ( the light fixture in the center of the room/ceiling being the least desirable means, and yet the most prevelant).

Not to mention the possible application of such, buy using RGB OLEDs, to visual displays. Your laptop, your TV, etc, all cheap, efficient, and nearly indestructable.

And, or course, the advent of the "visual wall display" so often used in Science Fiction stories.

No discernable market or clamor for such a technology? Man, you seriously havn't been paying attention.

KFG

The First One Has It

From the first ad:

Does Linux add up to lower TCO? Ask the Experts.

Sounds to me like they've got it about right.

Re:No clamor

The fact that you don't need a backlight anymore makes it not only more energy efficient, but also a lot thinner.

They are already used in some mobile phones [zdnet.com.au].

Re:No clamor

That reminds me of a cute quote by the Director of the National Bank in 1898, regarding an early demonstration of the "Edison Telephone"...:

"It's a cute little toy, but what is it really good for?"

-tsb