Brighter lights

A consortium of European industrial and academic organisations have received European funding to the tune of €12.5m to help them develop organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that can be used in the general lighting industry.

They are all involved in the so-called OLED100.eu programme, which follows the successful OLLA (Organic LEDs for Lighting Applications) programme which started in 2004 and concluded earlier this year.

Researchers working on the OLLA programme developed white OLEDs with efficacies of 50.7 lm/W at an initial brightness of 1,000cd/m² and with lifetimes well above 10,000 hours.

With OLED100.eu, the emphasis will be on developing OLEDs for general lighting applications that will sport higher power efficacies of 100 lm/W, lifetimes of 100,000 hours, a large area of 100x100cm² and a low cost - around €100/m².

'The European Council has agreed to cut at least 20 per cent in CO₂ emissions by 2020 and OLED100.eu is an important initiative to advance the development of energy-efficient lighting solutions that will help achieve that goal,' said Dr Stefan Grabowski of Philips Research, and the project manager of OLED100.eu.