Organic light-emitting diodes, a technology that is being hailed as the future of home lighting, have surpassed fluorescent lights in energy efficiency, according a New Jersey company.
Universal Display Corp. said Tuesday that it has created an OLED panel that produces 102 lumens, a measure of light output, per watt of electrical power.
Most fluorescent tubes yield 50 lumens to 90 lumens per watt, compact fluorescents less and Tungsten light bulbs the least _ about 13 lumens per watt.
"I think it's exciting. It's a nice milestone," said Anil Duggal, who heads the OLED unit at General Electric Co., which is racing against Universal Display to commercialize the technology.
OLEDs are made by depositing a thin layer of organic compounds on a sheet of glass or plastic; the compounds glow when current is applied. OLEDS are already used commercially in cell-phone displays and one television model from Sony Corp. In April, a German lighting designer said he would be the first to sell an OLED lamp, in a limited edition of 25 units.
Universal Display has received research funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, which has set a target of a commercial OLED at 150 lumens per watt in 2015.
There are plenty of problems still to straighten out with OLEDs before they're practical light sources. The panels dim with a few hundred or thousand hours of use. They're difficult to produce in large quantities, a problem that GE is attacking by "printing" OLEDs on plastic like magazines are printed on paper.
Non-organic LEDs, based on chip technology, have already achieved power efficiencies of more than 100 lumens per watt in the lab. Less efficient examples are in limited commercial use, but their high cost is holding them back from mainstream applications.
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