Your TV, computer monitor, household lighting, cell phone display and even your Christmas tree, may have taken a big step along the road of becoming organic, of sorts. Scientists and engineers in General Electric’s OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) research team have used their OLED panels to make a first-ever OLED illuminated Christmas tree at GE’s Global Research Center, Niskayuna, NY. GE’s flexible OLED panels show how this revolutionary lighting concept is going to transform the lighting industry.
An Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) has an electro-luminescent layer containing an organic compound deposited as a matrix of pixels using a printing process. The organic material is sandwiched between two electrodes that illuminate when an electrical charge is applied. OLEDs give out lower light levels than inorganic LEDs but do not need a backlight for use as LCD screens. This means thinner screens and lower battery power consumption. Anil Duggal, who leads GE’s OLED program, said, “We hope GE’s OLED tree lighting will inspire and capture people’s imagination during the holidays on the limitless possibilities of this next generation lighting concept.”
GE hopes to commercialise their method of producing the thin OLEDs which is good news for the environment since OLEDs have the potential to deliver dramatically improved levels of efficiency and environmental performance versus traditional lighting methods. GE has a process for producing OLEDs similar to a newspaper printing process in a roll-to-roll manufacturing step that is key to making OLED lighting commercially viable.
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