OLED lighting panels could be printed in the future thanks to a new method created by Panasonic Electric Works.
The Japanese company prototyped an organic EL lighting panel, which used some organic semiconductors made by a printing process. The panel was introduced at Printable Electronics 2009 in Tokyo.
Tech-On, a technology website that focuses on Asia, reported that the organic panel features a luminance efficiency of 40lm/W and a CRI (color rendering index) value of 95. The external quantum efficiency is 36.1 per cent and the half-life of the luminance exceeds 20,000 hours when the initial luminance is 1,000cd/m².
The printing method used was called “slit coating method†and Panasonic said the method was employed for the hole-injecting layer of the panel. According to Tech-On the slit coating method is a technology used to manufacture colour filters of LCD panels. Panasonic modified equipment provided by Tazmo Co, the company’s partner in organic EL lighting technologies.