Report: Lighting OLED Luminous Source Technology Trend

Abstract

The report deal with OLED light source introduction & basic structure and manufacturing process in detail from chapters 1 to 5; chapters 6 & 7 deal with white OLED actualization process and technology issues such as efficiency/low voltage operation/life cycle/encapsulation/large-area coating technology and development trends as for BLU and light source; chapters 8 to 10 deal with makers' trend and development trends by regions of US/Europe/Japan/Korea as well as technology roadmap for OLED.

Light source is generally divided into natural light source such as solar and artificial light source. As natural light source varies upon season, weather and time, we rely upon artificial light source and many artificial light sources were development and used after invention of the incandescent lamp in 1879.

After the incandescent lamp, similar types such as halogen bulb and krypton bulb were development. Afterwards, fluorescent lamp was commercialized and vastly used with merits of low energy consumption. While the incandescent lamp merits on superior color rendering, the fluorescent lamp merits on low energy consumption even though it has low color rendering: both incandescent and fluorescent lamps have been used different areas utilizing different merits.

After the incandescent and fluorescent lamps, new light source LED (Light Emitting Diode) emerged with high attention. In early stage, LED had problems of low brightness and lowering light characteristic, but technology developments led to LED with high efficiency and superior color characteristics which are now commercialized. After LED, the most recent developed light source is OLED which emit light using organic semiconductor substance. OLED as a light source, actualize various colors and is possible for high efficiency actualization, is able to be made extremely thin and light, is able to be produced as the light itself different from traditional lighting, and is able to be produced for flexible optical source such that many different shapes are possible.

Even though OLED is still in the development stage for using as the light source, recent increased development speed is allowing many improvements on lowered stability of device due to short life cycle, high energy consumption due to low efficiency and unsecured price competitiveness due to high production cost. The improvements on these negative aspects of OLED are closing the dates of being used as the LCD BLU or other general light sources. Especially OLED is thinner than other flat panel display such as LED, is lighter, is simpler in production and structure, and is superior in energy consumption. Also compared to multi type device, LCD, OLED is self emitting device such that it has wider color actualization angle, has more faster response time due to utilizing emit phenomenon based on electricity and is most adaptable for flexible display that is gathering attention as future display- the possible applications for OLED is simply vast.

Up until now, OLED has been developed as mainly for display device, but recently developments for not only display but LCD BLU and light sources have been actively progressed.

The lighting trend of recent days are eco-friendly, low energy consumption, small, light and thin aspects such that next generation lighting market is led by LED among many other lightings- Industry expects OLED will follow LED in expanding market share within lighting market and it will eventually increase competition between traditional light sources such as incandescent and fluorescent lamps.

Accordingly, this report examines OLED light source, which is expected to follow LED in becoming the center of future light source, and its technology trend and future market entry possibility