European OLED100.eu research project celebrates successful conclusion

A three-year OLED research project has ended with the demonstration of large-area lighting panels.
OLED100.eu, an integrated European research project to accelerate the development of organic LEDs (OLED) technology in Europe, has come to an end. The project received EUR12.5 million funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme and had an overall budget of EUR19.95 million. The program ran from September 1, 2008 to August 31, 2011.


As part of its overall goal of increasing the energy efficiency and lifetime of OLEDs for large-area lighting applications, the program partners demonstrated a large-area OLED luminaire that consists of nine 33×33 cm2 OLED tiles.
Fifteen companies and research institutes from six European countries (see below) have been working for the past three years to bring OLEDs closer to market introduction in general-lighting applications.


The OLED100.eu consortium has focused on five goals: increasing luminous efficacy; increasing lifetime; increasing the light-emitting area; reducing manufacturing cost by optimized processes; and measurement standardization based on application research.

Key results
The OLED100.eu consortium has demonstrated a number of significant results during its three-year lifespan, including:
• High-efficiency (60 lm/W) OLEDs based on Novaled’s PIN OLED technology and out-coupling materials;
• Long-lifetime (100,000-hr) OLEDs, comparable to inorganic LEDs
• Perception case studies on taste and acceptance of OLEDs as light source
• Industrialization scenarios and cost calculation of manufacturing processes with an emphasis on cost-efficient technologies like screen printing for substrate structuring
• Work on standardization of measurement procedures for OLEDs, which now serve as basis for work of the International Commission on Illumination (CIE).



Large-area OLED luminaire
The large-area OLED luminaire demonstrated by OLED100.eu contains 33×33 cm2 with a total light-emitting area of 828 cm2, and has an optimized luminance distribution for applications in shop lighting.


The drive voltage and current are 45V and 250 mA, respectively, and the luminance is 1000 cd/m2. The efficacy is 27 lm/W, and the lifetime is 10,000 hr (time to reach 50% of initial luminance).

“The OLED100.eu research consortium has played a vital part in ensuring that Europe will play a leading role in OLED technology for lighting applications also in the future,” said Stefan Grabowski, senior scientist at Philips Research Aachen and project manager of OLED100.eu.
“The results of OLED100.eu will contribute to further increase the acceptance of OLED technology,” said Karsten Diekmann, who is responsible for OLED product and application development at Osram. “In the project we gained a better understanding of end-user preferences, a better comparability through standardized measurement procedures, and better OLEDs.”


Christian May, head of business unit OLED lighting at COMEDD, said: “The work to achieve the challenging goals of the OLED 100.eu project brought us to a higher level of our COMEDD pilot process line. We are really proud of the 33 x 33 cm2 large OLED panels, which are one of the largest worldwide and made at our pilot process line.”
OLED100.eu partners:
• Bartenbach LichtLabor GmbH, Austria 
• European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC), France 
• Evonik Degussa GmbH, Germany 
• Fraunhofer Institut für Photonische Mikrosysteme (IPMS), Germany 
• Microsharp Corporation Limited, UK 
• Novaled AG, Germany 
• Océ Technologies B.V., The Netherlands 
• Osram, Germany 
• Philips Technologie GmbH, Business Center OLED Lighting – Lumiblade, Germany 
• Philips Technologie GmbH Forschungslaboratorien, Germany 
• Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Germany 
• Saint-Gobain Recherche S.A., France 
• Siemens AG, Germany 
• Technische Universität Dresden, Institut für Angewandte Photophysik (IAPP), Germany 
• Universiteit Gent, Belgium