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.

Universal Display Corp., a developer of OLED technologies and materials, and SFC Co. Ltd., a fine chemicals manufacturer, have entered into a strategic business agreement. Their collaboration will focus on developing and commercializing highly-efficient phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) material systems for displays and lighting.

General Electric has decided to end all plans for revitalizing their century-old incandescent bulbs. Instead, it plans to focus on LEDs and OLEDs.

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors and BASF have developed a highly efficient white organic light-emitting diode (OLED). This is for the first time that an OLED not only is able to achieve a light yield of more than 60 lm/W, but also meets the international Energy Star SSL Standard with regard to color requirements.  

South Korean scientists have developed an efficient “true blue” material that can accelerate the development of next-generation organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays.

Recently, the addition of the "Global and China OLED Market Report, 2007-2012" report is offered, as the development trends of the next generation display technology industry are concerned, OLEDs are still a highly important sector of the market. The global OLED production capacity is mainly distributed across Korea, Japan and China Taiwan, with the shipments of the top five manufacturers accounting for 98.7% of the global total.

It’s reported that researchers working in the European ROLLED project have developed a flexible OLED element that can be mass produced using roll-to-roll printing technology. The OLED elements can be used to add value to product packages. The new method is considerably cheaper than the traditional manufacturing method. The project was coordinated by VTT, and project participants included INM, CSEM, Ciba, Hansaprint, UPM and PolylC.

Light bulbs and fluorescent tubes are far away from the optimal efficiency, while OLED can offer new perspectives for novel large area light sources for display and lighting applications. Such displays are increasingly applied to mobile telephones, digital cameras, or pocket computers. In future these small light miracles will play an important role for TV screens and for lighting.

Recently, Eastman Kodak Company, a pioneer in OLED technology, announced the introduction of a highly efficient OLED material that will enable low-power, full-color displays with outstanding lifetimes.

Lighting in the future, as far as fact is concerned, is heading in the same direction. Ten to 15 years from now incandescent bulbs, fluorescent tubes and CFLs are going to be lightings of the past because of rapid advances in the field of organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDs. These are electronic devices made by placing a series of organic thin films between two conductors that begin to emit a bright light when an electrical current is applied.