Microsharp joins OLED project
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Microsharp Corporation, a privately owned UK company focused on the development of specialist optical films, has joined the EU-funded, OLED-100.eu R&D project as the only UK participant.
The three-year, €20m (£16m) project, which follows on from the OLLA project that sought to develop OLED technology for lighting purposes, is viewed as critical to the long-term development of the European OLED (organic light-emitting diode) industry.
The goal of OLED100.eu is to develop all the necessary technologies needed to produce efficient OLED products for exploitation by the European lighting industry.
Targets set by the project include achieving 100 lumens per watt power efficiency, more than 100,000 ‘lifetime hours’, a unit area of 100cm by 100cm and costs of €100 per square metre or less.
Microsharp's contribution to the project will be to develop optical film structures .
According to Microsharp, artificial lighting consumes between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of electrical energy in homes and offices, and OLEDs are said to be promising candidates to substitute conventional light sources such as incandescent bulbs and fluorescent tubes.
Microsharp added that the rate of OLED development is such that soon they will be more efficient than cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) and they offer many advantages in ease of manufacture and in providing a variety of light form factors.
