Lighting uses ignite the fire of OLED technological innovation

After 2009, OLED enterprises in the supply chain of the investment of more than $500 million. At that time, the overall value of the OLED market is only 500 million dollars, why is there such a huge investment? Leading the development of OLED is the main display, OLED sales of about $3 billion in 2011, expanded in 2012 to about $6 billion. OLED is expected to become another major use of lighting, but has not made much contribution to the expansion of the market. Now, OLED's eyes are aimed at the surface of the light-emitting, can play the use of non glare features.

OLED is still in the development of the technology, and the dominant inorganic EL does not form the competition. LED lighting device luminous efficiency of about 110lm/W, while the highest luminous efficiency of OLED products is only 60lm/W. Cost per KLM, LED technology is about $5, OLED is about $350. LED product warranty life of 20 to 25 years, while OLED only about 5 ~ 10 years. In addition, some of the OLED material is faster than other materials, so the color may change. This is intolerable in industrial and automotive applications.

OLED can do a variety of combinations of different materials, but also the use of a variety of structures. At present, we are trying to improve the luminous efficiency by increasing the drive current at the expense of the device life. Brightness can be improved by means of series OLED. Under the same current condition, two different structures of OLED in series can emit about 2 times of light. Or at low current to achieve the same brightness, improve reliability and life.

The OLED degrades, because the organic material layer is susceptible to oxidation and moisture affect the results, so the need to adopt anti permeability materials to protect. However, it is difficult to manufacture high efficiency, transparent, strong and high temperature resistant flexible materials. At present, the glass is used as the film layer substrate, and the glass plate is used as the mechanical protection and the waterproof and oxidation protection. But even these devices will deteriorate after the temperature rises. For example, the automotive industry at 85 degrees above the temperature of the implementation of accelerated stress test problems.

Product manufacturing OLED rate is very low. This is because the manufacturing process can not be fully controlled, and skills and experience is not enough. High cost of manufacturing OLED production line. Because there is no standard equipment, all trial production line will take several months to develop. OSRAM has invested 20 million euros in Germany's trial production line. Although OLED manufacturers have suggested that if the high cost of complex molecules can be made into ultra thin layer can reduce costs, but in fact, most of the manufacturing process has been lost.

If the mother glass substrates more, should also be able to reduce costs. Now use the 47cm * 37cm second generation glass board, can be cut into several pieces of 10cm * 10cm panel, but light a room needs 10 more panels. Each panel will have cut and connection costs, using a large panel can reduce costs. In addition, although there are still problems of how to make the surface of the panel to achieve the overall uniform luminescence, OSRAM solved the problem by using the metal mesh on the electrode.

The first stage OLED lighting is a special lighting application, followed by the lighting for office, commercial facilities and senior housing. OLED lighting is expected to reach about 1.5% by 2020, the market size of $1 billion 700 million, of which 80% for general lighting purposes. But this market size can only accommodate part of the OLED lighting manufacturers. OLED to succeed, we must develop new materials. In the field of chemical strength is very strong in Korea and Germany and other countries, may be born with the strength of the enterprise.

In the foreground under unclear circumstances, there are still so many countries involved in the field of organic lighting and joined its whole value chain, really surprising. Companies involved in equipment manufacturers, fluorescent and phosphorescent materials suppliers, polymer materials development companies, as well as glass and flexible substrate materials, such as plastic and metal foil manufacturers. Some companies have developed OLED new structures, plastics and special technical solutions for packaging and anti permeability or new electrodes. Fortunately, this technological innovation brought about by OLED can also be used in many other areas of electronics, thus helping to improve investment efficiency.