So, it's October. What do you do in October? Carve jack-o'-lanterns, of course! But once the pumpkins are carved, you've got to light them. What's the best way to achieve that great spooky glow? Your first answer might be candles. But the engineer in me says, "That's so 19th century!" Fortunately, we just happened to have some extra OLED lighting panels lying around, so we were able to create the masterpieces you see below!



Kodak is a leader in OLED technology for lighting and displays. We have demonstrated efficacies >66 lm/W on OLED panels meeting the Energy Star specifications for color and color rendering.  That's more efficient than 90% of the luminaires available today!

The picture below shows three OLED lighting panels mounted on a glass fixture. The panels are thin, bright and do not produce much heat. They are perfect for lighting jack-o'-lanterns - or rooms, for that matter. Come see Kodak's OLED lighting panels at FPD International in Yokohama, Japan October 28-30, 2009!

Kodak is a pioneer in Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) technology for displays and lighting applications. Recently, we've taken our leadership a step further and demonstrated our latest flexible OLED displays under water! OLEDs are notoriously moisture-sensitive, so this is quite an achievement for our team.

Here are a few close-ups of Kodak's flexible OLED display:

Flexible OLEDs have the potential to be a game-changer for the display world, realizing a unique form factor at lower cost. They also have broad applications in the lighting industry. Lots of people are thinking about how to use flexible OLEDs to create cool new gadgets and lighting. What would you do with a rugged, flexible display? Stay PluggedIn for the latest news from Kodak and flexible OLEDs!

Kodak OLED technology will be featured on Green Magazine TV Thursday, June 25 at 8:30 am on the Time Warner Cable Channel 36, Dish Network Channel 182, and DIRECTV Channel 278.

The show is about companies that are leading the way to a more sustainable future. Kodak's continued innovations in OLED technology will make the world a better place, with applications in both flat panel display and solid-state lighting. Kodak's compelling OLED "Green" impact will ultimately result in panels having fewer sub-components for ease of recycling, absence of heavy metals requiring special handling (such as mercury), and lower energy consumption. 

We are proud to know that all OLED products will use Kodak's invention of OLED technology. Kodak's leadership role in OLED technology represents what Kodak is all about ... "Making the World a Better Place" for many generations to come.

Here is the clip about Kodak OLED technology...

RANDOM TRIVIA:  The host of Green Magazine TV, Tristan Rogers, has connections to Rochester, NY (headquarters of Kodak). He has played Robert Scorpio on the soap opera General Hospital for many years. General Hospital is set in a city that looks suspiciously like Rochester, NY - it even has the same area code! When some of the show's best-loved characters, Luke and Laura, returned in the 90s, they shot the outdoor scenes right here in Rochester. A couple of scenes stand out for fans of GH - Luke and Laura jumping from a helicopter over a waterfall (shot over our city's High Falls) and driving a pink Cadillac down Main Street.

As long as we're playing Six Degrees of Separation ...  Kodak is connected to Vincent Pastore of The Sopranos (he showed us all how he feels about pricey ink), who is currently a cast member on GH.

During the first week of June, I was in San Antonio, Texas for the Society for Information Display's annual trade show. This is typically a techie show where you can find all the latest innovations in display technology, i.e. LCD screens for mobile phones, TVs & laptops; big plasma TVs; and newer technologies, like Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) and e-paper.  This year's show did not disappoint in that area, but there was also something new to be found on the show floor and in the technical symposiums - new lighting technology for a more sustainable world.

You are probably wondering what lamps have to do with laptop screens, right? It turns out that the organic layers you use to make an OLED for a TV can be used to make a flat "light bulb." This new "light bulb" is really a solid state light source that can greatly reduce the amount of electricity needed to provide the world's lighting and eliminate certain heavy metals, like mercury, from the light fixtures in our homes and workplaces.  You can see a video of the OLED light panels Kodak demonstrated at Display Week on YouTube:



RANDOM TRIVIA:  Even though Kodak is headquartered in Rochester, NY, we found our very own Kodak Building in San Antonio.
 


Thanks to our intrepid scientist, Tom Pawlik, we can fill in that question mark! Kodak was part of the International Exposition HemisFair in 1968, whose theme was to celebrate man's desire to go higher and farther in his constant search for achievements.



To that end, the 622-foot Tower of the Americas was constructed in HemisFair Park and was the tallest observation tower in the Western Hemisphere, at the time.
 

Kodak has returned to San Antonio, 41 years later, to demonstrate some our latest achievements. Just as San Antonio's HemisFair Park has evolved into the tourist-mecca that is the Riverwalk, Kodak has progressed from photography to new technologies for lighting and displays.
 

Today, Kodak released a great video explaining our vision for OLED and a technology overview on YouTube.  Kodak's strategic vision continues to thrive on being an OLED industry enabler for the world.  "Kodak's intent is to determine the best path forward for finding a way to scale within the OLED industry," said Corey Hewitt, Operations Manager and Vice President, Kodak's Display Business.  Kodak continues to see great potential for its OLED portfolio, but in the current global economic environment Kodak must more tightly focus its investments. Therefore, the company will pursue growth in its OLED business primarily through licensing and partnerships.   "Kodak will continue to invest in the OLED flat panel and solid-state lighting business, with the appropriate financial cost structure, and will explore numerous business opportunities on a worldwide basis for ensuring the best returns for Kodak and its shareholders as we progress through 2009 ".  For greater in-depth description, please watch this video....

Ok, now that we've piqued your curiosity with all this information about OLEDs, you're probably wondering when you can buy a television set with this phenomenal display. The engineer in me takes your question, "When will OLED TV's be available?" and turns it into more questions

• When will the technology be ready? Televisions have requirements for color gamut, resolution, usable life, etc.
• When will the technology be ready to make large displays, i.e. bigger than 27" in diagonal?
• When will the cost be acceptable to the average consumer?

Today, OLEDs are fairly common in small displays for portable electronics, including MP3 players and subdisplays in cell phones. These displays are typically passive matrix OLEDs (PMOLEDs). The annual revenue for PMOLEDs is approximately $500M worldwide. Kodak enables the manufacture of PMOLED display, with licensees numbering more than 15 worldwide.

AMOLEDs are required for television displays, due to their larger size and high-resolution video content. In 2003, Kodak launched the World's First AMOLED Digital Camera, the LS633. Today, OLED televisions are available in small-to-medium sizes from Sony (11-inch XEL-1) and Kodak (ELITE Portable TV).

One of the concerns for OLED technology has been the lifetime of the blue color, which has historically been less than red and green. Over time, this results in very dim blue pixels and shifting of the display toward yellow. Kodak has been developing new architectures to overcome this issue, in particular a very stable White OLED formulation, which can be used in combination with a color filter array to produce a full-color display. Kodak's White OLED architecture boasts a lifetime in excess of 100,000 hours. There are 8,766 hours in a year, so these devices are very stable. Another advantage of the White OLED approach is the elimination color shift over time due to one color dying out more quickly than the others.

Kodak's White OLED technology also meets or exceeds television standards for color gamut, image quality, brightness, contrast ratio and resolution. At the 2008 Society for Information Display (SID) Trade Show, Kodak demonstrated the World's First 100% NTSC White OLED Display showcasing Kodak deep blue. The display received many compliments about its beauty from show attendees.

Conventionally, full-color OLED displays have been fabricated by depositing individual red, green and blue emitters through a precisely aligned mask. The mask is a very thin piece of metal full of holes for the material to pass through to the substrate, similar to an art stencil. Using a precision mask presents many problems for manufacturing large displays, as it becomes exceedingly difficult to make, align and handle the masks as they approach the size of a queen size mattress.

The White OLED process, on the other hand, uses maskless technology, which is scalable to the glass sizes required to make television displays. An integrated color filter array is used, to produce full-color displays. Kodak uses an innovative design, RGBW, where a fourth unfiltered sub pixel is used to reduce the power consumption by ~50% in typical usage.

 

As with all new technologies, the cost is initially high. It takes time to develop new manufacturing methods to lower cost and improve yield. Kodak is pioneering new technologies to improve yield, like Global Mura Compensation (GMC) , and reduce manufacturing cost, like Kodak Vapor Injection Source Technology (VIST). GMC technology has been demonstrated on small displays in the Kodak ELITE Portable TV. The scalability of GMC to larger panels has been proven with the introduction of Kodak's AMOLED Wireless Frame. Our technologies provide the tools necessary to for OLED manufacturers to begin investing in Kodak White OLED technology. This will help bring affordable, large-scale OLED products to the consumer within the next few years.