Latest OLED lighting technologies were demonstrated at Lighting Fair 2009, an exhibition of lighting technologies and equipment that runs from March 3 to 6, 2009, at Tokyo Big Sight. Now some OLED lighting manufacturer is showing off their OLED lighting devices.

The Research Institute for Organic Electronics (RIOE) set up a booth focusing on OLED lighting. It exhibited OLED lights with various designs. One of them is a prototype panel with a high luminance of 5,000cd/m2 and a low power consumption of 15W. RIOE notes the panel has a luminous efficiency of 15lm/W, which is equivalent to that of an incandescent bulb.

RIOE's panels with a high luminance of 5,000cd/m2. The color temperatures are 3,300, 4,000 and 5,000K from left to right.

In addition, RIOE exhibited an OLED light composed of nearly transparent parts except for its wiring. RIOE notes its transparency is 70-75%. RIOE also prototyped an OLED lighting device that can be hung from the ceiling. It has a color temperature of 5,300K and a color rendering index of 80-85.

RIOE's transparent OLED lighting device

Meanwhile, an OLED light jointly developed by NEC Lighting Ltd and RIOE was exhibited in NEC Lighting's booth.

Lumiotec Inc is the only exhibitor that has announced the schedule to ship samples of the product on display. It is a company jointly established by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, Rohm Co Ltd, Toppan Printing Co Ltd and Junji Kido, professor at Yamagata University. Lumiotec plans to build a plant in Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, by fall 2009 and start shipping samples. At the exhibition, the company exhibited a 1.9mm-thick panel manufactured using R&D equipment.

Lumiotec’OLED panel is only 1.9mm thick

Separately from Lumiotec, Rohm exhibited a variety of OLED lights. The left picture shows the demonstration where reddish and bluish panels are attached and biaxially rotated. The right picture shows a stand light dubbed "EC-OLED." Rohm notes unlike LED lighting devices, OLED lights will not cause eye strain even even if you stare at them.

Part of the panels exhibited by Rohm

Panasonic Electric Works Co Ltd exhibited the thinnest panel of all the panels displayed at the event. It has a thickness of only 1mm. The company exhibited several panels with different color temperatures, including one with a high color rendering index of 94 and a color temperature of 6,000K, which is equivalent to that of sunlight.

Panasonic Electric Works' panel with a high color rendering index of 94 and a thickness of only 1mm.

Panasonic points out OLED lights will become widespread as supplemental lighting within the next couple of years, but it may take about 10 years before they are commercialized as main lighting.

As for overseas manufacturers, Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands exhibited the Philips Lumiblade. The Lumiblade is the brand name of its OLED lights announced in 2008. The product exhibited this time was manufactured at a plant that was recently built in Aachen, Germany.

Philips Electronics Japan Ltd, the company's Japanese unit, indicated that they have overcome problems such as dark spots caused by luminance variability and manufactured the largest panel.