The announcement was made at the Fifth International Conference on Solid State Lighting in San Diego, CA, part of the SPIE Symposia and Exhibition.
The Ewing, NJ company's record-breaking white OLED performance is based on a novel panel design that consists of an array of red, green and blue colored stripes. Adjusting the intensity of each primary color generates infinite shades of white color, typically characterized by color temperature and color rendering index (CRI).
Power efficiencies of this 6 x 6-inch prototype panel were measured at color temperatures between 2900 and 5700 K. The record 30 lm/W white OLED power efficiency was achieved at a color temperature of 4000 K; these figures are comparable to a cool fluorescent lamp. By comparison, typical incandescent light bulbs emit light at around 15-20 lm/W with a color temperature of 2900 K.
The 6 x 6" panel can also operate very brightly, and has produced 150 lumens of optical power at an efficiency of 15 lm/W and 3,700 K color temperature. In addition, the CRI was greater than 80 across the measured color temperatures because of the broad spectral output formed by combining the constituent red, green and blue stripes.
Increasing the efficiency of lighting by a small amount has the potential to generate tremendous savings in both cost and energy use. Universal Display says that the development of this white-emitting OLED lighting panel is an important step in this direction.
These results were reported in a paper entitled "Phosphorescent organic light-emitting devices for solid-state lighting," presented Brian D'Andrade, Senior Scientist at Universal Display. This work was partially funded by a US Department of Energy (DOE) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant.
"By harnessing the efficient nature of our proprietary phosphorescent OLED technology in a novel device architecture, we have been able to demonstrate record-breaking power efficiencies in white OLED devices," stated Steven Abramson, president and COO of Universal Display. "This advance is an important milestone toward the future adoption of white OLEDs for lighting applications such as those envisioned under our DOE research contracts."
