Organic LED table light

The lighting designer Ingo Maurer claims to be the first to have used organic LEDs (OLEDs) in a functioning table light. The light, known as 'Early Future', is being produced as a limited edition.

It uses 132 x 33 millimetre tiles straight from the laboratory of lighting manufacturer Osram and demonstrates the potential that OLEDs might have in future lighting applications.

Organic LEDs offer all the familiar benefits of LEDs such as high energy efficiency, low operating voltage and mercury-free design, and have some impressive properties of their own. For example, unlike run of the mill LEDs, the light source is not a collection of individual light points but a uniform light-generating surface.

And that could open up a plethora of new applications. 'In the future it will be possible to use OLEDs as flexible or transparent light sources. A transparent OLED over a window in a roof would be able to allow natural light in during the day and provide illumination for the room at night,' said Dr Bernhard Stapp, head of solid state lighting at Osram Opto Semiconductors.

There are possible uses for these new light sources in the automotive industry as well. Rear lighting elements, for example, could be integrated entirely within the rear windscreen.