OLED Development at OSRAM: Achievements, Trends and Perspectives (OLEDs LIVE! USA 2013)

OLED technology offers many interesting features for lighting applications. From the design

perspective, OLED enables high-quality glare free illumination from very flat light sources

with a superb off-state appearance. In addition, OLED is an efficient light source which has

the potential to become the second pillar of the SSL revolution alongside LED. Many players

contribute to the rise of OLED technology with continuously rising R&D effort. We will

review the remarkable progress and give examples for the recent R&D highlights which are

evidence of the future potential of OLED lighting. The underlying technological concepts will

be reviewed and state-of the art data are presented. The rising number of luminaire makers

integrating OLED panels into design luminaires reflects OLED lighting emerging as a topic for

general lighting.

However, considerable challenges remain. These will be outlined and benchmarked to

generic customer expectations derived from competing area lighting solutions. We argue

that once OLED reaches a certain base performance in efficiency, lifetime and cost, OLED will

enter the lighting market. The recent R&D highlights have clearly demonstrated the

potential of OLED technology for efficiency and operational lifetime. The market entry will

most likely be driven by differentiators against other technologies like form factors and

glare-free emission, instant-on, etc.

Apart from general lighting, there has recently been increasing awareness of OLED

technology at automotive OEMs, accompanied by a host of recent automotive design

studies. Automotive applications pose some specific challenges to OLED technology which

have long been considered tough or impossible. We will review recent progress in this area

which gives encouraging outlook of OLED technology meeting relevant automotive

specifications in the mid-term future.

Dr. Thomas Wehlus is Senior Engineer at OSRAM and since 2012 responsible for predevelopment

topics within OLED research and development. From 2010 to 2012 Thomas served as expert for

electrical, optical and thermal OLED simulation and was involved in various development projects.

Before joining OSRAM in 2010, Thomas graduated 2010 with a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the

University of Augsburg.

OSRAM is an OLED lighting pioneer, having the first qualified OLED products in the market. A further

landmark was production start on the Pilot-Production-Line for vacuum-processed OLEDs on glass

sub-strates, featuring a fully integrated inline process and cutting-edge technologies like thin film

encapsulation. OSRAM has outstanding expertise in development and qualification of OLED lighting

products - from material and supply chain to production processes, to testing and screening

methods, in the area of efficiency and lifetime optimisation on large tiles, electronic driving and

encapsulation. The OSRAM OLED development is located in Regensburg, Germany