Sunday, 14 February 2010
Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) wallpapers require very little power to produce light, and uses 2.5 times less power compared even to energy saving light bulbs. At the same time OLED wallpapers can emit almost as much light as a flourescent lamp, if not more, whilst lasting longer than a fluorescent lamp. The OLED surfaces can be printed on walls in homes and businesses, and can even be printed onto road signs (and the lighting for the road signs can be solar powered). OLED wallpapers can as a result make light bulbs obsolete and benefit the environment in terms of reduced energy needs and lower carbon dioxide emissions.
Back in late December 2009, LOMOX Ltd, a two-year old company in North Wales, was awarded £454,000 (€518,600) by the UK's Carbon Trust organisation in order to perform further research and development for its OLED wallpaper solution. The Carbon Trust estimates that if all modern lights get replaced by OLED wallpapers worldwide, then the annual carbon dioxide emissions could fall by 2.5 Mt (megatonnes) by 2020, and almost 7.4 Mt by 2050.
The technology used by LOMOX is quoted to have a luminous efficacy (the ratio of light emitted to the power input) of 150 lm/W, emitting light on only one axis, and is estimated to last longer than fluorescent lamps which have a luminous efficacy of 16-100 lm/W each, depending on the lamp power. The obsolete tungsten incandescent light bulb, has a luminous efficacy of 12.6-17.5 lm/W for 40-100W light bulbs by contrast.
As well as luminescent wallpapers, OLED is also great for displays in general, including televisions, computer screens, mobile devices, billboards and public displays, because not only do OLED displays provide great brightness, the contrast ratio and colours are superb, but the response time is extremely fast at 1 ms which is comparable to a CRT display and considerably faster than a TFT LCD which has typical response times of 2 to 12 ms, and the power consumption of an OLED TV is also very low, much less than a TFT, and OLED displays are said to replace TFTs (as well as CRT and Plasma displays) in the future.
OLED displays are also really thin (3 mm, 1 mm, or less), flexible (they can be rolled up like paper) and can be painted onto almost any conceivable surface, such as wallpapers, as head-up displays (HUDs) for vehicles, on T-shirts, as new lamp designs, even other gadgets which do not exist today. In addition, using OLED displays could potentially also help improve battery life of mobile devices of the future, given the low power consumption of the displays, although OLEDs are currently being used in some mobile devices today. LOMOX aims to get into many of these other applications of OLED too, not only OLED wallpapers, although LOMOX are focusing initially on OLED wallpapers for the outdoor market.
So how do OLEDs work? OLEDs are solid state devices composed of thin films of organic molecules (the molecules are hydrocarbons, which can be in the form of polymers), which emit light when electricity is conducted through these films. OLEDs do not need a filter to change colour, do not require a backlight, and OLED displays have a wide viewing angle too. And of course OLEDs can be used to create bright white light for the wallpapers (but in principle any colour light could be emitted), and without the need to use mercury (a highly toxic metal used in energy efficient lightbulbs) or any other toxic metals.
An introduction to OLEDs is shown below:
More information on how OLEDs work can be found here.
Although the OLED technology has been around since the 1960s, with recent applications starting to appear in the last 20 years, the biggest challenges have been to improve durability, especially in terms of OLED lifetime (and blue OLEDs have a much shorter lifespan than red or green OLEDs), and in terms resistance to moisture and oxygen because current OLED devices can be damaged or otherwise degraded quickly if too much water or oxygen reacts with the OLEDs, hence improved (watertight and airtight is ideal) sealing is required, one such improved sealing is a type of plastic film described here. And of course there is the expense of manufacturing OLED devices at the moment, which is why current OLED displays are relatively small or tiny.
LOMOX believes it has overcome the main problems of durability, efficiency and cost, and that it can produce long-lived OLEDs which are easy to fabricate, and with no loss in light output on multicoloured displays. LOMOX owns the patents on the materials that make this possible. LOMOX also say that they have found a way to make OLEDs inexpensive to fabricate. LOMOX hopes to roll out the first applications of OLED by 2012 including the said glowing OLED wallpapers.
As well as the grant for further development on OLED wallpapers by LOMOX, the Carbon Trust provides grants to small businesses for research into renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, of which there are 164 such projects currently in progress.
Various companies are also researching into OLED devices, for example an OLED TV wallpaper has been developed by Toshiba, and LG plan on releasing a 101cm OLED TV by 2012, and Sony have already launched the world's first OLED TV which at 27cm is very small, but is already available for sale online and in shops although it has a very high price tag. Sony, along with other manufacturers, will produce bigger, thinner, more flexible and more durable monitors in the future. There is also research being performed into 3D OLED TVs, and also into 3D OLED screens which require no 3D glasses. And a company called Kateeva are also planning print-based OLED technology. There is much research being performed into OLED in general, not only for wallpapers and monitors.
LOMOX's research into longer lasting OLEDs could have the potential to have a big impact on OLED devices in general, not only in wallpapers, and Lomox are the first company which says it has reduced OLED manufacturing costs and made it commercially viable.
To summarise, OLED wallpapers could replace light bulbs by 2012, because they consume much less power than energy saving light bulbs, and produces really bright light, and given that the whole wallpaper surface emits light, it could give a sunlight-like glow. Other benefits of having glowing wallpapers are that energy-saving lightbulbs which contain mercury can be phased out, and the risk of accidentally breaking any lightbulbs is eliminated because there would be no lightbulbs to break. Lomox are doing some pioneering research which could make OLED wallpapers and other devices more affordable and bring them closer to reality and everyday use.
2012 sounds a bit ambitious, but definitely an interesting technology and development!
ReplyDeleteI find it very strange that OLED was already available in the 1960s, but no one bothered to invest in its further research and possible applicatons!
OLED seems just another example of environment friendly technology which is used only after all the other polluting resources are exhausted (such as the use of fossil fuel vs electric car)!
Hmm, just so long as they've got a better output and colour quality than the OLED-backlit plastic roadsigns that are being trialled around some parts of birmingham at the moment. They're rather dim, and very blue - I presume it's so they gradually fade to yellow as they age, but it does make speed limit and weight restriction signs look a bit unusual, and not particularly easy to read.
ReplyDelete@tahrey - Yes, I hope they are better too. Actually I am surprised they have trialled the OLED-backlit road signs already, as the technology is not mature (at least I doubt it is mature enough). Personally I think it would've been better to have waited until the technology was mature, and the OLED-backlit signs had a longer lifespan (5 or 10 years e.g.) or was sufficiently inexpensive.
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