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.

sooo close

[cheeseSource]

Perhaps this will bridge the gap between roll up screens and the current lcd displays? It seems like it will still be awhile before oleds will be available for solid viewing. Any thoughts?

Re:sooo close

[deglr6328]

Sanyo thinks its oled's will be ready for production in a year. Here [digitalware.ru] 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.

Re:sooo close

[aaarrrgggh]

NO

We don't need another area source... we need better point sources for lighting! Needing 4" of depth to diffuse light isn't a problem...

Have you ever been in a space with all indirect lighting? It's terrible! There has to be some direct component for shadow/visual interest...

emagin

[bigpat]

emagin [emagin.com] is alrady making micro oled displays for gaming and other applications.

Re:sooo close

[SubtleNuance]

these have NOTHING to do with display tech. They are LEDs -- nothing more. The article says they are likely to show up in room lighting as a consumption reduction effort...

Re:sooo close

[gilesjuk]

Hopefully it will help solve the viewing angle problem with LEDs, that's the reason we still have filiment bulbs for some indicator purposes.

Re:sooo close

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Viewing angle problems? I'm aware of that with LCDs, but not LEDs? Care to explain?

Re:sooo close

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I think I know what you mean. But it must only be for a small amount of applications.

Slashdotted already

[arvindn]

Here's the text:
----------------

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.

Re:Slashdotted already

[GlassUser]

The second link is going fast, too.

Proprietary coating to yield thinner OLEDs

By Nicolas Mokhoff

EE Times
February 25, 2003 (2:18 p.m. EST)

MANHASSET, N.Y. -- Samsung SDI Co. has partnered with Vitex Systems Inc. to market displays based on organic light emitting diodes that the two companies claim are 50 percent lower in weight and thickness than any other commercially available display.
Samsung, which has been pursuing OLEDs volume production, will provide funding for the specialized design and engineering activities of Vitex's Barrier Engineering Program. Samsung said its goal is to explore whether the technology can be produced for encapsulation of full-color, active-matrix OLEDs.

Vitex's proprietary Barix thin-film coating is designed to enable manufacturing of thinner, lighter displays for the mobile device market, said Ho-Kyoon Chung, Samsung's senior vice president. "We believe that Vitex's Barrier Engineering Program holds the potential to be the fastest, most cost-effective way for Samsung SDI to achieve a thin-film encapsulation solution for our OLED displays," he said.

Broad adoption of OLEDs has been impeded to some extent by a key manufacturing challenge: the organic matter's sensitivity to moisture and oxygen, which can quickly destroy an OLED display if unprotected.

Vitex's thin-film technology creates a moisture and oxygen barrier that is potentially as effective as a sheet of glass, without the added bulk, according to the company. Using Vitex's Barix encapsulation, display manufacturers can deposit, in situ, a thin-film coating directly on top of the OLED material on a glass substrate.

The procedure would eliminate the need for a glued-on-metal can or extra sheet of glass. The resulting thinner, lighter display is expected to deliver higher reliability at a significantly reduced manufacturing cost.

"The Barix technology developed by Vitex has significant potential to help further propel widespread industry adoption of OLEDs, which have emerged as a promising candidate in the production of zero-border, super-thin displays," said Ross Young, president of DisplaySearch (Austin, Texas). The market research firm projects that global sales of OLEDs will grow from $112 million in 2002 to $3.1 billion by 2007.

"Working closely with Samsung SDI will enable us to create a customized solution that best suits their production needs. This will in turn allow Samsung to cost-effectively provide mobile device OEMs with extremely thin, lightweight, high-quality OLED displays," said Michael Sullivan, president of Vitex (San Jose, Calif.).

Vitex, a spin-off of advanced research laboratory Battelle Memorial Institute, has been involved in the development of Barix encapsulation for the past three years. Through its Barrier Engineering Program, Vitex said it could customize the Barix coating for the specific performance requirements of an individual manufacturer's OLED displays.

Re:Slashdotted already

[unicron]

For just basic home lighting scenarios, this would be really cool. Imagine your light switch now has 3 knobs, ones for red green and blue, plus an intensity switch. You could set up some nice mood lighting using rgb values. Maybe have it so you could save some values and call them when you wanted to. Would be a cool little toy to have.

Re:Slashdotted already

[Matey-O]

Imagine your light switch now has 3 knobs, ones for red green and blue, plus an intensity switch. You could set up some nice mood lighting using rgb values.

OOO yeah! And 802.11b for access from my PDA! And X10 so I can turn on my lights using my Garage opener...finally a use for the other two buttons on my sunvisor!

Um, it's a light. On, off and dim are pretty much the limit of what 99.999999% of the world wants. That other .000001% can't get laid and thus don't NEED mood lighting.

(I hope I didn't just make a 'foe' there)

Re:Slashdotted already

[Matey-O]

Alrighty, what would you propose such a light switch would look like? Keeping in mind the usability of a lightswitch. (at most, you've got a touchpad that brightens or dims based on time spent on the pad, a slider or an on/off switch)

So now you've got, what, three sliders? a switch and three knobs? A switch and three holes you've gotta put a screwdriver in to adjust intensity?

But that's just one plate, what if you want do adjust the ones in the kitchen as well as the ones in the living room?

Being able to set an 8-bit value for R, G, B and what-the-hell Alpha transparency would be a non-starter.

Of course, your lightswitch could have an Adobe colorwheel and an intensity slider, but then your _lights_ might cost you $20, but your light SWITCH will cost ya $250.

Ritalin? Nope, I'm not on Ritalin. I DID neglect to take my Zyrtec 'tho.

Don't throw out your CRT

[Anonymous Coward]

It was surprising news when Rockwell Collins announced that CRTs would become obsolete in 2003. Nobody expected that this soon. But there is no way back. Let's hope that the transition to LCDs will not be too painful and that LCDs will perform much more reliably. If the mean time between failure of the LCDs is two times or better than CRTs, we will have a win-win situation. It will cost money to invest in LCDs, but if the new displays are fit-and-forget types of LRUs, many people will be happy.

Nobody is considering whether to invest one penny in inferior display technology. Therefore, my message to the vendors is, if you stop production of CRTs and require the aviation community to switch to LCDs, make sure that we all get some benefit, both from the pilot viewpoint and the maintenance side. Vendors and airlines of course realize that there is no way back. There is no aircraft manufacturer that is even thinking about going back to mechanical or electromechanical technology. It would be a gigantic step backwards.

For me it would be equal to returning back to Austria in the year 1889 to help my great-, greatgrandfather repair mechanical church clocks.

Re:Don't throw out your CRT

[Sgs-Cruz]

So I was thinking, why would an AC post such an insightful comment, and yet so oddly out of place? (The discussion wasn't about airplane CRTs specifically...

Oh. He stole it from here. [aviationtoday.com]. Give credit next time, dude.

Re:Don't throw out your CRT

[anethema]

In its current state, LCD seems to be a horrible technology. I go to futureshop or its equivelant and look at the flat screen lcd tvs. There is a dvd playing on it, but it looks fuggin terrible.

LCD monitors generally have less viewing quality, and of course the horrible response time, bad viewing angle, poor contrast, and fixed resolution. I havent seen that many desks that were in such dire need of desk space that they needed to settle for LCD. A guy will buy a lcd tv or monitor and tell himself that the ghosting really isnt thaaat bad, or the viewing angle doesnt bother him thaaat much. These people are just fooling themselves because LCD is really the only real flatscreen tech on the market right now.

I believe when OLEDs hit the market LCD will pretty much be useless obslete technology. OLED has a fixed resolution, true, but suffers from none of the other disadvantages.

Look at this picture. [pocketpcthoughts.com]

After seeing something that amazing from a prototype, i really dont see a future for LCD in the computing world. Maybe somewhere in the embedded arena where a non-backlit LCD would suffice, but other than that, where?

Plus if these things hit 40-60 inches..that pretty much boots plasma out the door too.

I am only worried that since OLED will junk such a big area of displays, manufactuerers will be hesitant to deploy it, or will deploy it expensively and with low supply. The good thing is i guess it only takes one company to do it right, and the prices will come crashing down.

I guess as long as the manufacturers dont jack the prices up too much, i dont see a barrier to wide spread acceptance.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Imagine the impact...

[TechnoLust]

This will have serious effect on all facets of life. Imagine less intrusive instruments for orthroscopic surguery, saftey lighting on floors that isn't a trip hazard, thinner gadgets, etc. And of course the most important impact... NEW CASE MODS!!!! ;-)

Re:Imagine the impact... well maybe not so much

[mofu]

Its a tile barely over a square inch and still a 1/4 inch thick, hardly ready to change lighting tech as we know it.

I was personally hoping for something that would come of the production line by the roll and be applied like wallpaper to my walls or ceilings. Hide wiring in the baseboard moldings. Room not bright enough or the wrong color? Just turn it up . . . .

Re:Imagine the impact... well maybe not so much

[Oculus Habent]

I'm with you. While this is certainly thinner than most light sources, the "totally flat" suggested is a little much.

Re:Imagine the impact... well maybe not so much

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

applied like wallpaper to my walls or ceilings

Maybe they can design them in 1/16 or 1/8 inch sizes to snap together in a way that can be multiplexed. Run your lines on the horizontal and vertical edge and individually address each element in any color.

Maybe a 640x480 grid (expensive, I'm sure) of these things will be useful enough for simple gaming. But only if they change color fast enough. I'd hook a PS2 to it if I could.

auto industry

[EEgopher]

Anything that could make the bezel (display face) of radios and instrument panels slimmer and less space-demanding might save cost and even allow for more informative (or at least decorative) dashboard components. You could make your car's interior look like the Enterprise if you wanted.

the U.S. needs more phat car mods.

Re:auto industry

[Luyseyal]

and then there are us luddites who look for electronic gadgets with displays that actually TURN OFF. screw "dimming"... I want the damn thing OFF. Nothing uglier and distracting than your car stereo's screensaver when you're trying to sing and drive through hail at the same time!

-l

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:auto industry

[Peter Harris]

...and the seatbelts. :)

Re:Imagine the impact...Lower Taxes

[TechnoLust]

Yeah, where I live now has several traffic lights whith LEDs instead of bulbs. They did it where I used to live because people kept shooting them.

Shooting lights?

[nlinecomputers]

They did it where I used to live because people kept shooting them.

Ok but aren't they more expensive to buy? Wouldn't a shotgun blast destroy an array of LEDs just as easy as a big light blub? Cheaper costs per kilowatt hour of power I can see but how are they bullet proof?

Re:Shooting lights?

[TechnoLust]

They weren't being shot by a shotgun... mostly kids with BB guns and the occasional drunk with a .22. A BB or .22 will get one LED, but it would take a lot of time and ammo to pick them all off.

Re:Imagine the impact...Lower Taxes

[Ryan Amos]

Houston and Austin, TX (maybe more, houston and austin are all I ever go to) are replacing all their traffic lights with LEDs. Ditto for city bus brake lights/turn signals. The savings are bigger than you might think. Used to be they'd replace the bulbs in traffic lights every year or two, now they can wait ten. That means that they don't have to hire as many people to change the bulbs, they use less power AND they're totally compatible witht the old systems. Any city not seriously considering LED traffic lights is wasting your tax dollars.

Re:Imagine the impact...Lower Taxes

[AnotherBlackHat]

LED's use significantly less power than sodium vapor and other light tech.

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 .sig

Better Link

[sparkhead]

Here's a Better link [omron.com] 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.

"Omron"

[ashitaka]

One of the company's first products in the 40's was a home hair curling iron sold under brand name formed by a typical Japanese contraction (e.g. Pasocon = Personal Computer) and the inability to differentiate between "L" and "R" in written Japanese:

"Omlon". (hOme iLON)

Later they discovered this name really sounds stupid in English so it was changed to Omron.

totally flat?

[gid13]

wouldn't that be 2-dimensional? what is this, star trek?

Re:totally flat?

[Rew190]

Doesn't "flat" refer to the curvature of a surface?

Re:totally flat?

[gid13]

aye, that it does... my apologies for my continued inability to get humour across online :) btw i find it very disconcerting how quickly people reply on slashdot... it's practically IM

Re:totally flat?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Doesn't "flat" refer to the curvature of a surface?"

No, duh. It refers to the LACK of a curvature to a surface.

Re:totally flat?

[Bill Currie]

"flat" means the surface has an infinite radius of curvature, so you're both right :)

OMRON

[winston_pr]

"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)

Damn . . .

[Idou]

"Proves that size doesn't matter as much as will...(Don't pull that last sentence out of context will you)"

So size DOES matter more than will in some cases? This really ruins my plans . . .

Re:no more on OMRON, or?

[ashitaka]

You'd prefer the original name?

Omlon.

Totally flat

[oniony]

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.

Let's have flat *reflective* LEDs

[paj1234]

Then our screens could be used in direct sunlight, like a newspaper. And we could open all the blinds again, at last.

Re:Let's have flat *reflective* LEDs

[chrishan]

I think it may be too late for us geeks to be directly exposed to sunlight, the day we feel content to walk among men is over. The Light!!!

Re:Let's have flat *reflective* LEDs

[JPRelph]

Didn't the GameBoy Advance use a reflective LCD though? They're going to have to make them a lot better than that though if you want to read them like a newspaper, unless you regularly spend half an hour rearranging your lighting, room, pets friends and family just to ge the light right in order to read a paper. Honestly I used to give a little cheer when I actually could see the screen on that thing, it was nuts. I'm sure my nephews had started evolving into Lemurs after a few weeks gameplay...

JP.

Re:Let's have flat *reflective* LEDs

[akhaksho]

Do you know what LED stands for? Light Emitting Diode. *Emitting*. A reflective emitter makes about as much sense as dry water. You clearly have no idea about how LEDs work and the fact that you've been modded up means no one else does either.

LCD's

[dmaxwell]

The parent is probably thinking of reflective LCDs. And yes, it would be nice if LCD monitors had reflective elements so they could be used in brightly lit rooms.

Anyhoo, you're right as well, IF these things are bright enough then they would do as well in brightly lit rooms as CRTs. Come to think of it I wouldn't care for any screen that had an overly bright light shining directly at it but it would be better if none of these things washed out in bright indirect lighting.

Finally...

[Palshife]

Attractive and affordable ground effects for my case.

Omron?

[Czernobog]

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...

Re:Omron?

[bheerssen]

Uh, they just announced this particular device on the 18th. This is not just another LED application, it's a whole new way of using LEDs that results in smaller more powerful light sources.

I think it's way cool.

Correct link?

[grub]

I don't think that link is correct:


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Nowhere on that page does it mention flat LEDs!

[ The Applications Thread ]

[cybermace5]

I submit:

1. New aerodynamic automobile turn signal, running, and brake lights. They'll be smoothed right into the paint surface.

Re:[ The Applications Thread ]

[cybermace5]

Not if they reply as Anonymous.

Any clue? I mean, seriously, that was a good application idea for ultra-bright, paper-thin LED elements.

Re:not the modder, but

[cybermace5]

I knew that...but they are still very thin and flat, and lend themselves to an array large enough to make a brake light. Instead of a deep wiring and reflector pocket, the LED array can be set just a few millimeters into the skin and sealed flush with the car's finish.

More information

[arvindn]

NE asia online [nikkeibp.com]

omron technics [omron.co.jp]

Nice

[j_kenpo]

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?

Re:Nice

[egomaniac]

If you're using a 120 lumen LumiLeds LED, it's a 5W Luxeon Star. The 5W model actually has 4 emitters packaged into a single case.

Totally flat?

[Anonymous Coward]

At extreme viewing angles, the damn thing just disappears.

were they expecting to be slashdotted?

[frankmu]

from the omeron.com site:

---Information---
Due to system maintenance of our corporate web site, the search engine will not be available between February 25 and March 3. We are very sorry for the inconvenience.

New technology?

[BWJones]

Well, looking at their technology, it appears that it is basically a Fresnel type mirror that disperses the light from a single LED source. If I recall my undergraduate physics, this sort of thing could result in uneven light distribution and chromatic aberration in lighting surfaces making this less than ideal for displays, especially for those users where color is critically important.

Re:New technology?

[Thoguth]

You're right, the Omron picture looks a lot like a Fresnel lens, and it is distorted. Cool, but it seems more useful for car headlights or room lighting than for computer displays.

The EETimes article OTOH is all about Organic LED's, and looks to be the real next generation for display tech.

Re:New technology?

[BLuP1]

It really doesn't seem to be for display-purposes. OMRON makes industrial controls, &c-- they said their primary use would be replacing signal lights. Here in California, most of the traffic lights are now arrays of LEDs, this seems to be proposing to (once they're bright enough) replace the array with a single unit. Stadium displays could benefit-- most of them simply spread out the 'pixels' when the display is viewed from further.

The innovation is simply to redesign the LED reflector design to reflect current trends in use.

Re:New technology?

[AnotherBlackHat]

Well, looking at their technology, it appears that it is basically a Fresnel type mirror that disperses the light from a single LED source. If I recall my undergraduate physics, this sort of thing could result in uneven light distribution and chromatic aberration in lighting surfaces making this less than ideal for displays, especially for those users where color is critically important.

Currently, the backlight on most LCDs is one or more fluorescent tubes, which are also subject to "uneven light distribution and chromatic aberration".

This technology holds the promise of paper thin backlights. Even if light distribution is
bad, they could still end up with more even light than current technology at about half the thickness.

Frankley though, I have doubts about how viable it really is.

-- this is not a .sig

Portable light? I think I've seen that before ...

[SlightlyMadman]

... the "flat light source" will be positioned to realize future unrestricted illumination such as "wall-mounted light" and "portable light." ...

Wow, science never ceases to amaze me! Maybe next, they'll find a way to put lights on the ceiling, too, and, OOOH! Maybe attach a fan to it, to increase air circulation in my house! I'll have to see if Omron is developing a "flat fan technology" to make this possible.

thin led

[qoncept]

Just wait till the case modders get ahold of these. I can only imagine the attrocities.. <sigh>

Totally Flat?

[dmomo]

OK.. I can not "read the article before posting"; It's down. Big time.

I was just wondering what it means for something to be "totally flat". Does that mean that there is nothing "unflat" about it? Does it mean that it can be no flatter? Or, is that like "Totally Phlat, (with a - p h, man)"? Or, might it be that in this "totally flat light source" it is the light itself that is totally flat, which says nothing about the source?

Flat is relative. I have seen some "flat" leds before. You can always make a led flatter, when does it become "totally" flat?

Ok, I have beaten this to death. I started out 70% serious.

am I the only one?

[AssFace]

I must be dyslexic - I thought the company name was MORON and I found that to be fantastic.

Now who's the moron?
That's right. Me.

I'd like my walls and ceilings plastered with this

[Kosi]

Hey, it should be really cool to have all your walls and ceilings at home plastered with these thingies! Total control over what light shall shine on yourself ... :)

But they have to become smaller than 30 x 30 mm, maybe 0,3 x 0,3 would make a good movie screen or desktop on your wall!

Kosi

what's it useful for?

[Kopretinka]

It doesn't seem to be much of a breakthrough - they can just spread the light some, but it's not like you would get a nice uniformly glowing rectangle (of any thickness).

The image at their site looks like the light is reflected back, similar to parabollical reflectors, just thinner and with some dark areas.

So, what exactly is this useful for?

Totally Flat ... Not Thin

[Free Heel Skier]

For those of you who have a misunderstanding of flat vs. thickness...

flat -
1. Having a horizontal surface without a slope, tilt, or curvature.
2. Having a smooth, even, level surface: a skirt sewed with fine flat seams.
3. Having a relatively broad surface in relation to thickness or depth: a flat board.
etc.

thickness -
1.
a. Relatively small in extent from one surface to the opposite, usually in the smallest solid dimension: a thin book.
b. Not great in diameter or cross section; fine: thin wire.
2. Lean or slender in form, build, or stature.
etc.

They are talking about how FLAT the light source is not how Thick it is.

mirror 1

[lizzybarham]

totally flat light source [soggytrousers.net]

automotive uses

[timothy]

OK, I'm presently a bit car-crazy ;)

Flat LEDs (heck, current LEDs would be fine, really, but flatter would be better in a space-starved environment like a car) are what I want in a couple specific places in my car:

1) dashboard lights. Mine dashlights died a long time ago, and I'm using a clip-on LED flashlight to illuminate my speedometer etc. This is clunky and ugly in a way that many kids find themselves yelling at their dads for inflicting on the world, but a) dashwork is expensive and b) no joke, my LED flashlight clipped on an airvent does a *much better job* than the dashlights ever did. Granted, it's a cheap car, but still. Dashlights are lousy in most cars, though they've gotten better. But -- and I'm serious about this -- dashlights should NOT be incandescent bulbs any more. They should be LEDs, OLEDs, or some other basically permanent light source. Silly to have such a vital piece of equipment be something as outdated as an incandescent bulb, *and* be so difficult to replace (in most cars).

2) Domelight. Same deal -- domelights are generally lame anyhow, sort of like lighting a candle ... three feet overhead. I would much prefer several LED clusters (with diffusers) as my dome light.

3) Overhead reading lights. (For your navigator, lights that don't blind the driver.) Bright LEDs with a shade so they can't be aimed at the driver's face accidentally. (Breakable shade, so you *could* aim them intentionally when you're kidnapped for ransom and are being driven away in your own car ... I guess.)

4) Map light -- Think of the LED "stalk" lights for notebook computers. A thin gooseneck with an integral LED for pointing at your book / map / sketchpad (not for the driver).

Bring on the flat LEDs, and send some to the car maker's *design teams* please.

timothy

Re:automotive uses

[Lumpy]

Most cars above the $9500.00USD mark have Electro Luminesent dash lighting. at least all the pontiacs from 2001 > do.

Heck the Pontiac econo-car they are currently selling has the coolest dash lighting I have ever seen.

Personally I want to know why the hell do we still have the mechanical pointers that are obviousally driven by the digital systems.. Give me a digital dashboard and call it done, but even today in the year 2003 it's damned hard to find any car with a completely digital dashboard.

I guess it's based on the stupidity level on the general public and their inability to comprehend numbers compared to pointy things.

Re:automotive uses

[Bitmanhome]

The best way to read speed and tach really is an analog guage. A digital guage would have to be a simulation of an analog one. So count yourself lucky that your car maker put in a real analog guage, instead of a chunky digital one.

Re:automotive uses

[bluGill]

Obviously you have never driven a car with a digital dash. Sure it sounds good, the speed limit is 55, and the numbers say 54, but in practice you have to think to realise that 54 is just less than the speed limit so you could speed up a little. (we all know you never speed, so needing to slow down isn't a problem) With a analog display you learn where the mark that indicates the legal speed for 55 is, and you can tell at a glance how far under/over the limit you are without thinking. The mind just understands it better.

As a final nail in digital's coffin, if implys more accuracy than you have. Sure the display say 55, but because of tire wear and misadjustment you are doing somewhere between 50 and 60, just based on the speedometers I've checked myself (against a GPS). With analog you learn that the pointer is a little high or low, and automaticly compensate for it, with digital it turns out you don't do that as easially.

Re:automotive uses

[Bitmanhome]

a) dashwork is expensive

No, not at all. Just grab a screwdriver, and take out the dash yourself. Easy as pie, though there are usually lots of screws, and sometimes several interlocking pieces. I did it for one of my old cars, and the bulbs were cheap.

I don't see a problem with incandescents in the dash; there are a bunch back there lighting up the same two dials, so if one dies, I don't even notice. Besides, in my experience, those lights have been exceptionally durable, even if the car itself wasn't.

2) Domelight.

Depends .. my current car (Toyota) has the light right in front of the mirror. Just enough light for getting in and out without ruining my night vision, but too dim to do anything else.

Gooseneck or clip-on lights are really the only way to get enough reading light without spilling too much light everywhere else. And you can get gooseneck lights that plug into the cigarette lighter.

When, How Much, and How Hard?

[jmichaelg]

When will these devices be available, how much will they cost and how hard are they to use?

They're not worth much if they're not available, need lots of support circuitry or cost 100 times more than what's currently out there.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

[silvakow]

Perhaps this technology could also be used in computer displays? At this point, the backlight behind a flat screen display makes up for most of the bulk. The Apple 23 inch display is something like 8 inches thick where the the backlight is. This technology could be used to create flat panel displays that are even thinner than the ones we have now by providing a bright, flat backlight.

Thin != Flat

[ehiris]

You can put a bulb in a very high diamater reflector which makes it thin in relation to how long it is but it doesn't make it flat!

How many lumens per watt?

[dpbsmith]

It's disappointing that the article doesn't say anything about luminous efficacy (lumens per watt). Is it greater than or less than traditional LED's?

From the fact that it's NOT mentioned I'm guessing that it's less, meaning that these are more useful for decorative applications than as a serious source of illumination.

Re:How many lumens per watt?

[Smidge204]

Assuming the LED chip is pretty much the same as any other LED semiconductor, then it's probably the same efficiency.

But the real trick here is that this device sends ALL of the light out over a fairly wide area and in ONE direction, using a fresnel-type reflector. That makes the device flat and relatively thin, but puts out a good deal of light over a large area. Somethingf you'ld probably need an array of standard LEDs or a (relatively) bulky parabolic reflector to do.

Of course, it's not exactly broundbreaking research. The geometric properties of Fresnel lenses has been known for a long time. This is just an example of a good, easy idea that everyone has just overlooked until now.
=Smidge=

so has...

[g4dget]

a company called "Kodak" [kodak.com]. In fact, lots of people have been working busily on commercializing this, and there are probably some OLED products on the market. It's not quite competitive with LCDs or CRTs yet.

odd (offtopic -1)

[sckeener]

a totally flat light source which might give traditional LED's a run for their money."

I had to reread the begining because I thought totally flat was 2d and my mind couldn't wrap itself around 2d light. How am I going to see it?

old concept, new package

[mickcim]

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.

Wearable Displays...

[drenehtsral]

These guys are already notorious among wearable developers. Here's why. The bought the patents and designs for the Private Eye HUD from the previous manufacturer, and put it and all of it's relatives out of production. Never mind that they were higher resolution, cheaper, and lower current than any of the competing display solutions, and STILL ARE!

The display technology involved a single strip of extremely high density LEDs packed together in a line, and a vibrating mirror that would scan back and forth as the LEDs blinked to make a picture. Neat technology. Very high contrast, readable in high light conditions.

I spent a year or two hoping they'd come back, but no =:-( They're gone, and _just_ before I managed to get my hands on one.

Re:Wearable Displays...

[British]

Isn't that how the display for the Adventurevision console worked?

Electroluminescent are flat. This isn't.

[Animats]

This isn't a flat lamp. It's a LED with a lens. This [novael.com] is a flat lamp.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

"truly full color"

[nmg196]

How can it be "truely full color" and "make any color possible" when it's only got normal red green and blue LED technology to work with? Although you can mix up quite a lot of colours with these three, you're still fairly limited in what you can produce in terms of the full gamut of the eye. For example, monitors (also obviously using RGB) can only display a certain set of colours that you can see in real life. It can't display a shade of red that's verging on infra red for example, or an extremely deep purple that's almost ultra-violet. It can only display colours which it can "mix" out of red green and blue ie colours which have a wavelength higher than the wavelengh of the red channel and lower than the wavelengh of the blue channel - and even those will be limited by the quality of those individual colours.

Nick...
PS: I speak English English from England, so sorry if me spelling colour correctly offends you :)

Re:"truly full color"

[KillerBob]

How can it be "truely full color" and "make any color possible" when it's only got normal red green and blue LED technology to work with?

I would wager that this "true full colour" that they're talking about would be the same "true full colour" that your monitor and TV are doing. 16.7 million colours, isn't it? AFAIK, that's far more colours than the human eye can distinguish.

To put things in perspective... I doubt very much that you can distinguish between 520.5nm and 520.55nm light. Green is green. It doesn't really matter that the thing can only display colours in increments of 0.001nm, because you'll never be able to tell the difference.

I understand your points about the extremes of the spectrum, but that's a comparatively small amount of the visible spectrum that doesn't really occur often enough to discount it.

Besides... this "true colour" they're advertising could just be in comparison to existing technologies. ;)

A Better Link

[mofu]

How about a link without MySQL and PHP . . . .

Try Japan Corporate News Net [japancorp.net]

Coutesy of Google News . . . .

An even better link

[srmalloy]

The press release on Omron's web site [omron.com] 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.

Re:Sheesh..

[sparkhead]

Too bad they didn't save a few bucks FOR THE BANDWIDTH TO HOST THEIR SERVER!

The article linked is not their server. I provided a link to the article on their site in another post.

MORON?

[noitalever]

Did anyone else read that post as "Here's a story about how a company called MORON has developed a totally flat light source"

and I'm thinking Holy Crap their marketing team has a tough road ahead

Re: MORON?

[jedinite]

Dyslexics of the world, untie !

Re:Sheesh..

[Alan Partridge]

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.

actually...

[gid13]

...unless i'm very confused, people were complaining about the OTHER link being slashdotted... and it's already posted, so don't bother :)

Re:Changing color

[GT_Alias]

Yeah, you can change it to any color because it mixes red, green and blue.. So just create a means of adjusting the levels and the possiblities are just about endless.

I don't think it would necessarily have anything to do with a car that changed colors, unless you built every single external panel of the car out of these light panels.

I think it would be very cool for interior lighting though. You could completely alter the "mood" of the room, liven it up with a bit more red, or subdue it with more blue.

Re:OLED problems

[bagofbeans]

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.

Re:White Light LED's

[cybermace5]

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.

Re:White Light LED's

[cybermace5]

That's how your company makes them. Most other white LEDs use the phosphor mechanism.