It looks like we could one day be buying our OLED displays by the jar or the bucket-full, at least if some researchers from Sumitomo Chemical and Mitsubishi Chemical have their way. They’re now working on what they describe as “spreadable” OLEDs, which could either be spread or “painted” on virtually any surface, leaving an OLED screen that would be just 100nm thick. As if that wasn’t enough, the spreadable concoction would also double as a solar panel that’d keep the OLEDs powered, something that’s apparently possible due to the “similar, but opposite, principles” that OLEDs and solar cells work on. What’s more, while the two companies are apparently still in the early stages of research, they say they’re aiming to have usable prototypes ready within the next two years.

Exciting times.. read on..

It’s an exciting time for OLED technology as it finally begins to integrate into the home and designers start to realize its potential for efficient and inexpensive lighting solutions in a variety of stunning new applications. Resembling a tiny tree blossoming with lucent leaves, Ingo Maurer’s Early Future lamp is the world’s first to pack energy efficient OLED lighting into a tabletop form factor.

Organic light emitting diodes are incredibly energy efficient, long lasting, and can be produced on the cheap as evinced by GE’s recently rolled out OLED printing system. The two-dimensional panels emit broad swathes of diffuse light that is perfect for interior lighting applications, and they can even be rendered in a flexible format.

Ingo Maurer states: “They have a totally different look than traditional light sources. They neither require reflectors directing the light into the right direction nor large sockets. Their lightness allows the realisation of long-standing visions of mine”.

The Early Future lamp is the crowning achievement of Maurer’s artistic innovation and Osram’s team of 50 research engineers dedicated to the development of OLED technology. It features an elegant array of ten small (132 x 33 mm) OLED panels, and Maurer states that it “represents an important stage in the transition from abstract object to functional designer lighting”. The designer’s name and artistic acclaim are bringing to bear a hefty price tag for the lamp, but it’s a striking proof of concept that will hopefully light the way towards future innovations.

+ Ingo Maurer

+ Osram

Photo source: Ingo Maurer/OSRAM

Via ecogeek.com

We found this over on inhabitat today..originally from the GE Blog

With all the issues facing the planet, man produced or not, we really like seeing new technologies like this being produced. I’ve been to India, and I’ve seen the good LED Lighting can do there. LED’s in the long run, are extremely cheap, and offer great lighting alternatives, with often better ambient lighting in my opinion. With new technologies like the ones that GE are working on with OLEDS, we quickly see this as becoming a viable alternative to regular light bulbs, cfl or otherwise.

From the Article:

Hey everyone. We have a big development in the lab to report.

Since the early days of OLED research, people have said that OLEDs could potentially be made at very low cost because they don’t require expensive semiconductor manufacturing techniques. The ultimate low cost fabrication method would be a continuous “roll-to-roll” process like what is done in newspaper printing. However, so far, no one has demonstrated that OLEDs can be made this way. So about 4 years ago, we set out to find out for ourselves whether it could be done. We found a partner company (Energy Conversion Devices or ECD) with great experience at making roll-to-roll equipment and together we were successful in winning a proposal that we submitted to a government agency (NIST) looking to help fund high risk technology development.

Our proposal was to build a research roll-to-roll line for making OLEDs and our deliverable was to show that OLEDs could be made on it. We’ve been working to make this happen for the past 4 years. This means that we’ve been working to develop OLED device designs and fabrication processes that are compatible with roll-to-roll processing and to design and build individual equipment modules and then integrate them into a working line. Because this had never been done before, we faced some real technical challenges – especially given our program time constraints that often meant we had to start designing machine modules before we had the device fabrication process completely figured out! Anyway, in the end it all came together and we were successful in making our deliverable. Here’s picture proof that we were able to make OLEDs using our roll-to-roll machine.

Going forward, we’ll be using this machine to try to move from manufacturing research to real manufacturing. Still a lot of process and machine development to go but our recent success has energized us to keep going!

“Today GE announced the successful demonstration of the world’s first roll-to-roll manufactured organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting devices (press release). This demonstration is a key step toward making OLEDs and other high-performance organic electronics products at dramatically lower costs than what is possible today. The green crowd is thrilled as well. Personally, as the parent of a 3-year-old technophile, I’m dreading the animated cereal boxes.”