OLEDs, the new generation of LEDS

1 September, 2011 No Comments

Designing lighting for architecture and decoration.

Nowadays illumination is very important to complement the design and decoration of homes, businesses, industries, streets or roads. A wide variety of electric lamps exist in the current market, but the trend is to minimize energy consumption. Semiconductor diodes or LEDs make the difference (see previous posts).

Different types of lighting

This image shows the evolution: four generations in illumination technology: incandescent light, fluorescents, compact fluorescents, and OLEDs in different colors, considered the near future in lighting.

OLED is the organic version of LEDs. The differences among them are considerable:

* Instead of producing a bright spot, as LEDs do, they produce uniform illumination over a large area.
* OLEDs, are supported in a thinner, more flexible and luminous material than crystal layers of LEDs since the substrate used can be plastic.

OLEDs

*Economically more affordable: Although its production is currently quite expensive, its cost will be reduced considerably when they reach the mass-production stage. When that occurs, its cost could be the same as the cost of the material in which the OLED is printed. Thus being more competitive in comparison to current LEDs.

OLED support

* The result is a better contrast and brightness, since the pixels or dots emit the light directly.
* Allow new architectural applications, ie; paper with light, its integration into furniture, worn on clothing, or other forms of implementation yet to be discovered. Somehow, lamps for homes will disappear. It is expected to reach its commercialization phase in 5 years, both for decoration and functional lighting. However in order to be fully commercialized and added into our daily lives, we should expect 10 years.

* In addition to emitting light, researchers are working so that the new version of OLEDs can absorb also solar energy to produce electricity.
* The problem is that its organic components, molecules and polymers, are difficult to recycle. They also suffer high levels of degradation when they are exposed to water.

* Currently its use it’s expanding to TV screens, computers, mobile phones, MP3, billboards, and as light sources, to illuminate general spaces.

The importance of lighting in architecture increases every day, since the facades of new buildings, hotels, museums, gardens, plazas, streets, monuments, and many more, as well their interior, are enhanced with specific forms of illumination…… (remember that it is quite hard to make good lighting projects, both indoor and outdoor.