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Organic LED Could Replace Light Bulbs? 254

egrinake writes to mention a BBC article about a 'natural' replacement for lightbulbs. From the article: "The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply. The material, described in the journal Nature, can be printed in wafer thin sheets that could transform walls, ceilings or even furniture into lights. The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer."
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Organic LED Could Replace Light Bulbs?

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  • by PC-PHIX ( 888080 ) * <jonathan@pc[ ]x.com ['phi' in gap]> on Saturday April 15, 2006 @06:33AM (#15134852) Homepage
    ...but a wafer thin sheet of organic material shining above a cartoon character's head is never going to look as good...!

  • by Sir Unimaginative ( 967464 ) <sir_unimaginative@sbcglob a l . n et> on Saturday April 15, 2006 @06:43AM (#15134869)
    Drop a couple AAs into a pouch in a jacket or something, wire it up to strips of this: Suddenly drivers etc. can see you at night. I wonder if there's any feasible way to do this in a torch format....
  • In clothes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bombula ( 670389 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @06:43AM (#15134872)
    Once they get this stuff stitched into clothing, it's going to be just about unbearable. As if all the marketing crap of t-shirts wasn't bad enough already, what with our entire culture expressing individuality by paying corporations for the privalege of advertising their products on our bodies, now people are actually going to be lit up like downtown Tokyo. Fan-fuckin-tastic...

    Well, I suppose the Tron Guy [tronguy.net] is going to have a field day with this stuff, so it's not all gloom and doom...

    • Its already unberable. Perhaps we can create our own anti-ad campaign with them. "This space NOT for rent" sort of stuff.
    • by Dibblah ( 645750 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @06:51AM (#15134887)
      Please. Don't do that. At least there's only one tubgirl pic.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Actually, there have already been a few designer labels putting lights into clothing. It makes you look like a complete twat, but some fashion victims will wear them anyway because you can push a button and have the designer label light up.

      Seriously. I'm not making it up, a guy I know had a jacket like this that he spent serious amounts of money on. The best part was that he had to stop wearing it because people were constantly just walking up to him and punching him in the chest to make him light up

  • by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattr@telebod y . com> on Saturday April 15, 2006 @06:48AM (#15134881) Homepage Journal
    Thank google for google..
    It's a story of USC and UDC (Universal Display Corp. near Princeton U)
    Though it seems they need to make sure it doesn't get wet, and looks like a target for thieves who want the platinum or iridium in every molecule..
    Interesting that one article says current incadescents are 15 lumens/watt (true?) while OLED is now at 20 with potentially 60 l/w in near future. I thought those led/dry cell driven pocket torches produced 30 lumens though..
    google keys: Professor Mark Thompson of the University of Southern California oled
    • by Plunky ( 929104 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @11:11AM (#15135446)
      I thought those led/dry cell driven pocket torches produced 30 lumens though..

      as far as I can tell, that is marketing bullshit.

      I have a LED headlight for my bicycle and while it is very intense when its pointing right at you, it has very poor illumination capability when compared to an incandescent headlight. The light is very directional so when they say 'X lumens' it generally means they measured the output in the beam segment rather than the the whole sphere.

      For town riding, such a headlight is fine. You arent using it for its illumination, you really only want a light so cars can see you, and if you are riding into oncoming traffic at night chances are you are a fool. The rear light is generally more important. In the country where streetlighting is non existent, the LED is barely adequate and you need an incandescent bulb.

      I can't be bothered to google for references to back my shaky claims up, its just a personal anecdote.

  • What's so wrong about light bulbs or processors producing heat besides their natural purpose ?

    It seems to me the more heat I produce from my bulb/processor, the less my temperature regulator will pull energy from my heating system (based on gas, which is becoming more expensive). What's wrong with this way of thinking ?
    • by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @06:58AM (#15134893)
      It seems to me the more heat I produce from my bulb/processor, the less my temperature regulator will pull energy from my heating system (based on gas, which is becoming more expensive). What's wrong with this way of thinking?

      There's an extra layer of inefficiency. If you heat your house by burning gas, you get nearly perfect efficiency: almost every joule of heat liberated by the chemical reaction goes into your house, with a relatively small amount of waste heat going up the chimney; modern boilers are very efficient indeed at getting every bit of heat they can.

      If, OTOH, you heat your house by electric current - i.e. by the waste heat from your electrical devices - then somewhere in the world there's a power plant burning gas on your behalf. That plant converts gas to heat at higher efficiency than your boiler, but then wastes energy in the conversion to electricity, and then even more is lost in transmission to your home.

      So, if you switch to more economical lighting, your boiler will have to burn a little extra gas because you're no longer getting the heating effect of old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs. But that's more than offset at the power plant, where they have to burn less gas because you're consuming less electricity.

      • You are right. Heating is the one thing that can be done at 100% efficiency. On the other hand I think it is a huge waste to use any energy specifically dedicated to heating.

        If you use other devices, such as computers, light bulbs, etc, for heating, you convert them all to work at the efficiency of the powerplant+transmission - which is the best one can do - for electrically powered devices. (and 100% if you generate your electricity at home). Why are some people heating their home, while others run compute
        • Re:Double duty (Score:3, Interesting)

          by meringuoid ( 568297 )
          But for a consumer, all that matters is the cost of energy: if 1W from electricity costs the same as 1W from gas

          It generally doesn't, because of the conversion and transmission losses. Heating by electricity is more expensive than heating by gas, because the power plant has to burn more gas to supply that electricity than you would have had to burn yourself to heat your hom directly. If gas prices were to rise, then electricity prices would rise along with them (and have been doing just that).

          However, i

        • I'd say the reason this isn't a good design is the majority of people in the world probably heat their house on average less than half the time. There are a lot of places which are on average warmer than human comfort level, and so have to spend more energy on cooling than heating. Any thermal inefficiency in the equipment these people use then shows up TWICE on their energy bill as they have to pump that excess heat out of the building. Trying to pump this heat to a place that needs heating would be fai
      • That's true in the greenhouse-only world.

        In the practical world, due to taxes and varying regulations and base tariffs being exchanged on the varying tarif of gas/electricity, I've been able (2 years ago) to lower my gas bill by 350 euros by raising my electricity bill by 36 euros. I left my duron 1200 computer on day&night and thereby saved a lot of cash. You needn't believe it, but I'll just keep the money to myself.

        • I'd buy that argument for Europe - where it's generally cold or colder. In much of the world however - the big energy cost is cooling - and the real concern is how to build a house with minimal Heating AND Cooling costs. Your Duron probably isn't going to help much. Although I do recall a night spent in Kiev with every electric device running simply for the heat of it.

          AIK
      • but...all my electricity comes from gravity, not from burning some type of gas.
      • If you really want to break it down to costs, keep in mind the price difference between each item. If the new more efficient bulb is 10x more expensive, you have to save that much in energy costs just to break even in the long run. This is the main reason why you don't see more houses have motion-sensed switches. The amount of energy you save by automatically shutting off lights will take many years to just pay the extra costs of the switches. In addition, this is also the same reasn why Hybrids are not
      • by Spock the Baptist ( 455355 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @09:42AM (#15135178) Journal
        There's an extra layer of inefficiency. If you heat your house by burning gas, you get nearly perfect efficiency: almost every joule of heat liberated by the chemical reaction goes into your house, with a relatively small amount of waste heat going up the chimney; modern boilers are very efficient indeed at getting every bit of heat they can.


        The above statement assumes that you live in a place where heating is the main problem for indoor environmental control. I'd like to point out that for folks between the Tropics of Cancer & Capricorn or respectively just above, or below them heating is not the problem, cooling is.

        Here in East Texas we're already running our air conditioners and it's only April. The reason for this is not that it's all that hot, but to dehumidify the air in our homes, offices, etc.. I've lived in Texas for all my 40 plus years. Normally we have more than ten days of 100 degree F. or greater being our daily high temperature. Late July, and all of August, plus the first half of September can produce some real scorchers. The use of high efficiency lighting, helps reduce the power consumption at home, office, etc. in two ways. First, it simply use less Joules to produce a given amount of lumens of light, second it reduces the amount of waste heat that the AC must deal with. So, you save on the cost per lumen of light, and you save on the cost of AC that is used to rid the indoor environment of the wast heat.

        I've noticed that many of the post here on slashdot have a 'high latitude/left coast' bias on energy issues. Can't imagine why.

      • If, OTOH, you heat your house by electric current - i.e. by the waste heat from your electrical devices - then somewhere in the world there's a power plant burning gas on your behalf

        You seem to be implying that all electricity is derived from the burning of fossil fuels. That is incorrect.
    • 1. Light bulbs heat around where they are, the ceiling and not where people usually are (closer to the floor).
      2. Heating allows for fine tuning of the temperature.
      3. In the summer, the excess heat from the light bulb must be negated by your cooling system, causing even more energy drain.
    • It seems to me the more heat I produce from my bulb/processor, the less my temperature regulator will pull energy from my heating system (based on gas, which is becoming more expensive). What's wrong with this way of thinking ?

      In an ideal world, you wouldn't be using neither gas, oil, nor electricity for heating your house (at least not as the main source). There are plenty of more environmentally friendly heat sources available, like heat pumps, wood, solar power and so on.

      Also, in case you don't live in a
      • the insulation is good enough to keep the house warm with the help of ventilation air heat exchangers

        I'm near the other end of things a full 1000km out of the tropics. The house I live in has no insulation and very thin wooden walls. The idea behind it is if you have a lot of air flow under the house and high ceilings you have a large body of air that is in shade. The thin walls mean the house cools down quickly at night to ambient. Better insulation and no airconditioning on really hot days would resul

        • You're describing one methodology of tropical design, which does make sense and work. Another way of doing it is to have really heavy walls/roof, and basically insulate the hell out of it so that the temperature never has a chance to warm up that much during the day. You're basically trading the temperature swings for a more constant temperature. It never gets as cool, but never gets as warm either.

          The cool thing that can happen now is, with some more advanced materials and some thoughtful design, you can c
          • You're describing one methodology of tropical design, which does make sense and work. Another way of doing it is to have really heavy walls/roof, and basically insulate the hell out of it so that the temperature never has a chance to warm up that much during the day.

            As long as the water table is low enough one of the easiest ways to do this is to put the entire building in a big hole in the ground or inside a hill.
        • I'm no expert either, but I would still expect an insulated building to be better at keeping the temperatur low in your situation. The thing is, with a light colored surface, good insulation, and ground contact (after the first couple of inches it's usually pretty cool wherever you are), you will have a hard time heating it up in the space of a day.
          Without insulation, you are completey laying yourself to the mercy of the climate.

          Wood is generally a good insulator though. I can't see how an airflow would hel
      • As a comparison, there are heaterless homes built in Gothenburg, Sweden. The only heating needed comes from the inhabitants and their appliances (fridge, TV, computer(s), stove etc), the insulation is good enough to keep the house warm with the help of ventilation air heat exchangers.
        As another comparison, I've heard that a modern office building in Kiruna (northernmost town in Sweden) needs cooling 90% of the year...


        Office buildings tend to have a higher density of people than houses. Per person heat o
        • Office buildings tend to have a higher density of people than houses. Per person heat output is non trivial.

          Yes they do, they also have quite a bit of IT equipment, so it will be easier to design for heaterless usage. Still, Kiruna is in the land of the midnightsun and doesn't really see the sun for a couple of months, and it can get quite snowy and cold there (think -20C and lower). In conventional building styles, even houses in the south of Sweden (or for that matter, in Germany), are equipped with heati
    • Using waste heat for heating is fine, but it only works when you WANT heat. In the middle of summer, your waste heat is just battling the air conditioner, or at best, simply wasted as it blows out the open window.

      Also, regardless of price, gas is more energy efficient than electric heat.
    • It seems to me the more heat I produce from my bulb/processor, the less my temperature regulator will pull energy from my heating system
      In my case it's Autumn now and on rainy nights it's almost cold enough to shut a window - the rest of the time excess heat is unwelcome. Stick a lot of lighting in a office or a cluster in the server room and it all adds up if you have to push the temperature below the average winter temperature.
  • by tk2x ( 247295 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @06:50AM (#15134884)
    I have 10,000 light sources in my house... and I want to customize lighting scenes for every mood. Each OLED has its own IPv6 address, and I have a touch screen where I can paint different color lights.

    Hmm, interesting possibilities...
  • economy (Score:4, Informative)

    by boldi ( 100534 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @06:59AM (#15134896)
    There's only one question every time. How much light/W does it produce (lm/W)? And what is the price for the 'OLED bulb'.

    And... do not compare it to traditional light bulbs. Traditional light bulbs are dead.

    Of course, LEDs have achieved a lot in producing more and more light, but currently it is some 10s or 100s fold differends between the price of the
    fluorescent light sources and a LED based one, and the fluorescent light source (mostly) produces more light than the LED.

    Yes, I hope that OLEDs will be the ones who can reach the barrier, but until that this article is very-very optimistic :)

    check
    (figure:)
    http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/atlas/h tmlu/lightdintro2.html [eu.int]
    articles:
    http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/atlas/h tmlu/lightdintro.html [eu.int]
    http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/TP40_IESNA_July%20200 4_LED_Paper.pdf [lumileds.com]

    • Re:economy (Score:3, Informative)

      by Decker-Mage ( 782424 )
      From the article cited in a post above ("Measuring the Efficiency of Organic Light-Emitting Diodes"), incandescant bulbs come in about 15 l/w, current OLED's 20 l/w with the potential of reaching efficiencies of 60 l/w. Even a 33% increase in efficiency is a good start and if they can reach 400%, that's a heck of a step towards paying for these devices let alone towards conservation efforts.

      Actually, this isn't anything new. I've known about it for several years now. Nice to see it finally clawing its

      • What about current energy saving light bulbs then? Doesn't they use like 1/5 of the electricity and last 8 times longer than regular light bulbs? And they are quite cheap nowadays to. The do contain mercury thought, but does that really matter if you leave them for recycling?
    • Traditional light bulbs aren't dead in the home lighting industry at all. Why? Because the color is so vastly superior to what flourescent lights have to offer. Offices typically care more about costs than the well being of their employees, so they employ flourescents to save money. Communities care only about improving safety at night, so they use HPS. Traffic signals just need to be visible in a narrow field and a narrow frequency range, so they use LEDs.

      Which leaves home lighting as the last big fro
  • 100% efficient (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15, 2006 @07:12AM (#15134910)
    TFA speculates that these oleds could become 100% efficient. Maybe these people should go to work on the perpetual motion machine. I'd bet the farm that they can't achieve 100%. "In this family we obey the laws of thermodynamics." etc. etc.
    • Actually, electric heating is considered 100% efficient because there is no waste heat. If they can get the OLED to use all the power to generate just light and an insignificant amount of heat, say less than 1% they'll probably say it's 100% efficient because really the wasted energy is insignificant.
      • Actually there is a lot of waste heat in electrical heating. Transmission losses average about 7.2% in the US, and most electricity in the US is generated by burning fossil fuels. Conversion efficiency of combustion to electricity is only about 30%.

        Compared to a modern condensing gas furnace which gets about 90%+ conversion efficiency of fuel to useful heat, electrical heating is incredibly inefficient.

        • Yes, but they don't consider losses over the lines when calculating the efficiency. You base it on the energy you are paying for. Technically you are correct because there's a lot of energy loss over such great distances, but for heating, you still consider it 100% efficient because you are using 100% of the energy you pay for to heat your house. Though, it still is way more expensive than any other form of heating.
  • OLED vs LED (Score:3, Informative)

    by minimum ( 719615 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @07:17AM (#15134918)
    OLED's are nice for displays, but not enough lumen/watt efficiency for general illumination.
    LED's are improving much faster - 100Lm/W from Nichia to hit market soon:
    http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/technology/show Article.jhtml?articleID=181503227/ [eetimes.com]
    • OLED's are nice for displays, but not enough lumen/watt efficiency for general illumination.

      thats ok when you are talking about point sources, but TFA mentioned something about printing it onto glass or plastic. Ok, so then you spread it out - have a low level light evenly over the ceiling and point sources for reading. No need for garish illumination.

      How about if somebody creates a 'paint' of this, just spray it all over the walls and ceiling and ambient lighting is all over.

  • by subreality ( 157447 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @07:29AM (#15134934)
    Everything they're saying about OLEDs, people have said about regular LEDs for some time. Sure, they're efficient and cool, but they've never become a primary lighting source for a couple important reasons:

    #1, they're too expensive. Compact fluorescents - which are are a 4x efficiency gain over incandescents - are only just starting to catch on now that they're under $2.

    #2, the color rendering sucks. You know how old fluorescents used to made you look undead? LED's suck even more.

    So, instead of addressing either of those hard issues, they give us an article full of: "The researchers believe that eventually", "Before this becomes a reality", "If that barrier can be overcome", etc. Thanks for the fluff.

    Also, I'm not normally a grammar nazi, but for the love of god, 23 sentences:21 paragraphs is a ratio to be ashamed of.
    • #2, the color rendering sucks. You know how old fluorescents used to made you look undead? LED's suck even more.

      You can make LED sources with high CRI (colour rendering index) if you combine six or seven LED colours together. An ex-colleage of mine made one with a 95+ cri.

    • #2, the color rendering sucks. You know how old fluorescents used to made you look undead? LED's suck even more.

      I'm also worried about this, based on this sentence from TFA:

      To create the new material, the scientists build up ultra-thin layers of plastics coated with green, red and blue dyes.

      I've had a closer look at some fluorescents and they have something like 7 or 8 different dyes. You can look at the spectrum by reflection from a CD, for example. There's a clear difference between the continuou

      • I've had a closer look at some fluorescents and they have something like 7 or 8 different dyes. You can look at the spectrum by reflection from a CD, for example. There's a clear difference between the continuous spectrum of incandescent bulbs and the discrete one of fluorescents.

        For one thing the latter is throwing off quite a bit of light energy you are never going to see.

        This three-component LED sounds even worse; on the other hand, the component spectra might be relatively wide.

        You do realise that
        • The sensitivity of the eye to R, G, or B is relatively wide-spectrum compared to LEDs. which are nearly monochromatic. For display purposes, tight spectra work well, but when used for lighting of objects which have narrow reflecivity spectra which do not match the spectra of the lights, the colors appear distorted, often severely. For example, an oil slick which appears as a continuous rainbow in sunlight will appear as a series of RGB bands under an RGB LED light. A more common case is poor color accuracy
    • by Davey McDave ( 926282 ) <psychodave@gmailFREEBSD.com minus bsd> on Saturday April 15, 2006 @08:34AM (#15135017) Homepage
      No no no.

      First of all, PLEDs (that's POLYMER based light emitting diodes) are a liquid, so they can actually be printed using existing inkjet technology - it's incredibly cheap to manufacture because you don't need special equipment, just modify existing plants. Instead now of printing paper, you're printing lightbulbs/screens.

      Secondly, each of these is minutely small. The emissive layer is LIQUID. The resolution is absolutely fantastic, just as good as liquid crystal.

      Thirdly, LCD screens are dependant upon polarisation. You have a really strong backlight, you pass currents through the liquid crystal layer and it blocks out certain frequencies of light. No matter what you show on screen, whether it be completely black or completely white, it's consuming the same electricity, it's just that in one, the liquid crystal is letting you see it, in another it's not. Have you ever wondered why the screen gets its darkest ONLY when you turn it off? That's because the backlight gets turned off. OLEDs naturally produce the light from the off, and only use the energy required to make the frequency you need. Not only does this mean you get a more natural colour, you get REALLY good contrast because you can render black properly.

      Forthly (I should really stop this list): because you can tailor make a film of OLED to produce a particular frequency of light, it WILL look natural. If you're asking why, think back to some basic physics - you remember that when an electron descends an energy level, it emits a particular frequency of light? The sun has a pattern of frequencies produced this way, but it's with hydrogen, which is quite hard to replicate, with say, neon and flourescant bulbs. With OLEDs it's easy to tailor make molecules that'll replicate the same frequency spectrum.

      I had to do a presentation about OLEDs a few months ago mate: I know my salt.
    • From The Register's take [theregister.co.uk] on the same story:

      The American team's breakthrough was to make OLEDs able to emit the daylight-style white light needed in homes and offices.

      And I really think this is too hard on them re the qualifiers. "Eventually" they think they can hit 100% efficiency. And both the other qualifiers are on the last remaining problem: protection from water.

      As for cost, I can think of a few reasons the cost on LED screens might drop faster than the discrete kind.

    • #2, the color rendering sucks. You know how old fluorescents used to made you look undead? LED's suck even more.

      Old fluorescents? My neighbour gave me a desk lamp the other day that I thought was kind of interesting looking so I went off to the hardware store to buy a new replacement bulb for it thinking that the new fluorescents were somehow improved over their predecessors. Surprise. Greenish-yellow light, albeit with a less noticeable 60Hz flicker. I didn't notice how bad it was at the time (the lamp
      • Your neighbor's desk lamp probably has a bad ballast. While both wear out, ballasts last alot longer than tubes, so they're seperate items in commercial installs. You replace tubes like once every couple years, ballasts are like once every couple decades. CFL's have their own ballasts, because they're designed to go into sockets like a incandescent.

        There's actually not much difference between tubes today and 20 years ago. The difference is the usage of computer power supply type switching technology to
    • These guys have been making the TV and radio rounds for a couple weeks. They routinely admit two things. First, that the technology is not ready, mostly due to the enviromental degradation issue. Second, light bulbs are a commodity item and no one wants to pay money for replacement bulbs.

      Now to address your concerns. The flourescent has a problem becuase it reguires a special setup, initially costs signficantly more, and only pays off through energy savings. I have had flourescents around since I was

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15, 2006 @07:44AM (#15134953)
    "Before this becomes a reality, the scientists need to work out a way to seal the OLEDs from moisture which can contaminate the sensitive material, causing it to no longer work."

    If only they could put it into an airtight package, something small and convenient, maybe a ...bulb... of some kind.
    • I can see it now, origami masters in high demand to fold sheets of this stuff into ultra compactness to fit inside conventional bulbs, and thus make use of the existing manufacturing process.
  • Christmas (Score:2, Funny)

    by Falcon611 ( 413766 )
    Imagine the Christmas Light competitions with those suckers
    • I bought myself a set of blue LED christmas lights in minibulb format this year ... they are fantastic. Run on 3 watts per strand, brighter than standard minibulbs. I could easily afford to run a hundred strands continuously. I'll definitely be buying up more each year (they were a bit pricey, but the prices keep coming down).
  • by doti ( 966971 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @08:30AM (#15135010) Homepage
    Replace the light switch with a dimmer and your bulb will last MUCH longer, even if you always use it to max. That's because the kick the filament receives when turned on is aliviated. Even if you turn it to maximum very fast, it's still a lot slower then the switch. I used to buy replacement bulbs every now and then. Since I put dimmers all around the house, and that was five years ago, just two bulbs died.
  • by Hao Wu ( 652581 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @08:37AM (#15135026) Homepage
    "The material, described in the journal Nature, can be printed in wafer thin sheets that could transform walls, ceilings or even furniture into lights."

    Sounds like Dave Bowman's bedroom in the last few minutes of 2001. (Too bad we can't post pictures here... thanks again "goatse.cx" commies for ruining things.)

  • ... and these are going to be very expensive lightbuibs.

    Now I realize costs of manufacturing in places like China will be much lower in the US, but the hole transport material we used had expensive catalyst requirements which wouldn't scale up over 10kgs. I think I solved that problem before getting laid off (thanks guys) but when all is said and done, this stuff sold for $20-$200 / gram. The dopants, which make the colours, sold for 10x that amount and were even MORE difficult to make (small scale chem l
  • Yeah but (Score:5, Funny)

    by jlebrech ( 810586 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @09:05AM (#15135094) Homepage
    how many OLEDs does it take to replace a lightbulb.
  • Q: How many marketing guys does it take to change a wafer-thin sheet of organic material coating your home's wall?

    A: However many it takes to convince you that *this* is easier than just changing an ordinary incandescent bulb.

    seriously though, i can't wait. i want my whole house to light up.
  • People for the Ethical Treatment of Organic Materials demand for an end to this barbaric electrocution of poor defenceless cute possibly furry glowing organic stuff!!

    Sorry.. I'll go back to my work now..

  • Old time lightbulbs might be expensive to use but they have a bunch of advantages compared to todays energy efficient bulbs. First of all the energy efficient bulbs and fluorescent lights, emits fever colors of light and it gets harder to see colors under their light. Second, they have a fast flicker that you do not see directly but that the brain can detect. Studies have shown that this light raises your stress level(both because of the color and flickering) and are really bad in an enviroment where you ha
  • by grumpygrodyguy ( 603716 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @10:57AM (#15135391)
    The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.

    Yes, but does it create a nice black-body spectrum curve like conventional light bulbs?

    Most people like warm cross-spectrum light because it resembles sunlight, I didn't RTA but 'a brilliant white light' sounds like fluorescent to me. Not a very 'natural' alternative.
    • by rebelcool ( 247749 ) on Saturday April 15, 2006 @11:55AM (#15135602)
      tungsten isnt close at all to sunlight. If you've noticed those newer "natural" light lightbulbs you get are just tungsten with a blue filter on it to cool the color temp down.

      theres also many types of fluorescent bulbs. the film industry uses daylight balanced fluorescent quite a bit now because you can have a continuous light source without all the extra heat generated by the incadescents.

      in any case, regardless of what the color spectrum is, it is easy to color filter a brilliant white light.
  • by ankhank ( 756164 ) * on Saturday April 15, 2006 @11:04AM (#15135412) Journal
    Once they figure out how to produce this stuff cheaply, the bacteria will get hold of it and the whole planet will become brilliant.

    Then we'll have to invent artificial darkness to get away from the everpresent glow.
    • All you people are so selfish. Imagine all those light-fearing grues throughout the world, their habitat already decimated by all this light polution, and you want to add more light. Sure, we've all heard tales of dumb adventurers who ran out of light and got eaten by a grue, but that's just because they'd encroached on the grue's habitat.

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