Mitsubishi Electric has confirmed that it will show a 149" prototype OLED screen at ISE 2010. Believed to be the world's first scalable OLED screen technology, the new system aroused considerable world-wide interest when it was revealed at last October's CEATEC show in Tokyo. A world-leader in outdoor LED screen technology with its Diamond Vision screens, the company believes OLED has the potential to similarly revolutionise its indoor commercial displays business.

A new national R&D project has recently been started in Germany focusing on the development of OLED displays and lighting applications. AIXTRON will participate in this 14.7 million Euro project together with ten other partners with the target to strengthen Germany’s leading position in the fast growing OLED market.

Market researchers forecast a threefold increase up to almost 13 billion Euros by 2012 for light emitting diodes (LEDs) and organic LEDs (OLEDs). These technologies offer a particularly small size, a long lifetime and top levels of energy-efficiency, thus opening up new applications and new markets.

In the recently started ‘So-Light’ project eleven German companies and research institutes work closely together on Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs). The goal is to reach a leading position in the fast growing worldwide OLED market. The 14.7 Million Euro project is also financially supported by the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research).

Both Idemitsu Kotsan and Sumitomo executives in an article of the Financial Times, point out that "2012 will be the year when OLEDs hits the big times".

It’s said that GE and Israel's Power Paper will jointly-develop self-powered (battery) OLED Lighting. The project will combine Power Paper's paper-thin, flexible batteries with GE's OLEDs. The company says that the new OLED products will cost less, be more effective and will be reliable and shock-resistant.

Eastman Kodak Company announced Dec. 4 that it would sell substantially all the assets associated with its OLED business to a group of LG companies, and had entered into a technology cross-license agreement with LG Electronics, Inc., which will allow each company broad access to the other’s patent portfolio.  

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors has introduced the first OLED light source for functional lighting. Orbeos, the new energy-efficient surface-emitting panel, is especially suited to applications for architecture, hotels and catering, offices, private homes and shops. The Orbeos OLED panel has a round lamp surface of 80mm diameter, is only 2.1mm thick and weighs 24g. These limited dimensions ensure plenty of different usage options. With an efficiency of 25lm/W, the panel beats that of conventional halogen lamps.

Konica Minolta Holdings, Inc. has been developing organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting as one of its promising new businesses in the field of energy and environment. The company recently announced a construction of a new roll-to-roll pilot coating line to manufacture OLED lighting within its Hino facility in Tokyo. The pilot line is dedicated to establish production technology toward mass-production and to sell the product on the limited basis.

DuPont announced that it has been awarded a $2.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a two-year project to develop a solid-state lighting source using low-cost organic light emitting diode (OLED) solution-processing manufacturing techniques.

Applied Materials, Inc., Merck KGaA and the Braunschweig University of Technology (TU-BS) Tuesday announced that they have been awarded a grant by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to develop processes to lower the cost of manufacturing organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting for general illumination applications.

Merck KGaA recently announced that it has launched a project called "New materials for OLEDs from solutions" (NEMO) together with renowned partners from industry and science. The objective of this project, which is being co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is to develop innovative, soluble materials for use in large-area organic light-emitting diode (OLED) components for devices such as televisions, electronic traffic signs or lighting systems.

The world’s first and only OLED lighting design conference is scheduled to take place in Boston (December 2-3) this year. Over 100 lighting design professionals are expected to attend the conference.

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors announced it has developed new transparent OLED prototypes which are only a few hundred micrometers thick and do not need separate encapsulation. The samples have a luminous area of 210 cm² and are already showing the enormous potential of OLED light sources.

Along with its ongoing activities in the field of LEDs, the Zumtobel Group of Austria is also investing in OLEDs, a technology with a bright future.

After many years of development OLED lighting has now started commercial production. This breakthrough is going to change the day-to-day business of every single lighting designer in the world. Taking place Dec 2-3 in Boston, the OLED Lighting Design Summit 2009 will bring together over 20 leading OLED experts and 150 attendees to discuss the use of OLED technology for lighting design.  The agenda will focus on a number of key issues including:

Novaled AG, a company dedicated to energy saving and long living OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes), and Plextronics, Inc., an international company that specializes in conductive organic inks for printed lighting, solar and other electronics, recently announced that they have agreed to jointly develop doped and solution processed organic materials for OLED applications.

Plextronics, Inc., a U.S.-based technology company focused on OLED and organic solar technology, announced last week that it has completed a $14 million Series B-1 financing round to commercialize its technology in the LED lighting and solar markets.

Sony will likely delay the launch of its new ultrathin organic light emitting diode (OLED) television, according to a report by Wall Street Journal. Once on track for the end of 2009, the larger Sony OLED TV is only slated to launch in 2010 at the earliest, because mass producing the new displays would exacerbate losses at its TV division. Its losses are blamed partly on decline in TV business due to sagging global economy.

SRI International, an independent nonprofit research institute, and Showa Denko K.K. (SDK), a Japan-based chemical industry company in partnership with Itochu Plastics Inc. (CIPS), have achieved record-breaking results using SRI’s new cavity organic light-emitting diode (COLED) technology and SDK’s light-emitting polymers to produce a highly efficient light source that could one day replace incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs.

Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) recently announced that it had developed a new structure for its organic electroluminescent (organic EL) devices achieving approximately 40% in light output, which represents the highest level in the world.           

Researchers from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan have developed an organic light-emitting diode (OLEDs) with a range of color temperatures that fully covers those of daylight at different times and regions (2300K to 8200 K).

The Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University and Universal Display Corp. recently announced a breakthrough in advancing displays with organic light-emitting diodes.

Eastman Kodak Company has been named by Frost & Sullivan as the recipient of the 2009 OLED Lighting Enabling Technology of the Year Award in the field of Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) Solid State Lighting (SSL) Technology. According to Frost & Sullivan, the Enabling Technology of the Year Award is presented to a company that has developed a technology that can benefit or revolutionize the industry.

Researchers at the Technical University of Dresden and Novaled AG have collaborated to create a 90 lm/W OLED luminaire. The OLED has a brightness of 1,000 cd/m2 according to the researchers. The OLED light engine with a 3-D light extraction technology reportedly achieved an efficacy of 124 lm/W.

Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd has developed a new flexible OLED-based poster by combining a regular EL panel and organic EL panels.

A DOE researcher has achieved a big progress in his research on organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) by partly solving the problem of weak blue diode in white OLED lights.

Recently, Universal Display Corporation, an innovator behind today's and tomorrow's displays and lighting through its UniversalPHOLED(TM) phosphorescent OLED technology, announced that the company's research advances in white OLED lighting performance was honored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) during the DOE's Annual Solid-State Lighting Workshop. With the support of the DOE, Universal Display has been working on developing highly-efficient white OLEDs for use in myriad lighting applications.

The EU-funded project ROLLED has succeeded in developing a flexible OLED light source that could make packaging more attractive, among other applications.

It’s reported that European researchers have developed a cost-effective method for manufacturing flexible displays in much the same way that newspapers are printed.