Vertical Divider

Sumitomo Chemical Developing Flexible OLED Lighting R2R Process
December 11, 2017
 
Electronic Device Industry News reports that Sumitomo Chemical has been working on OLED lighting products since 2014.  Their rigid OLED Lighting Panels Include:
 

• 16.3 x 16.3 cm
• 10.9 x 10.9 cm
• 4 x 4 cm
• 4 x 2.11 cm
• 10.9 x 16.3 cm
• 10 cm diameter circular

 
Each OLED lighting panel can select one of 120 colors based on the customer’s needs.  Its pilot production site is Ooe plant in Ehime-prefecture and this Ooe plant conducts production and marketing activities while its polymer emitting materials are produced in Osaka-prefecture.   While Sumitomo is producing rigid type OLED lighting panels, its goal is to produce flexible type OLED lights, using a roll-to-roll method.  Sumitomo’s focus is to produce white flexible OLED lighting panel with a temperature of 3000K, 60~80 lm/W and over 20K hr. lifetime. Sumitomo’s OLED lighting developing team is trying to build a R2R process and to solve the issue of high costs. The company projects a price of ~US$100 for 10 x 10 cm panel.  For the R2R process, Sumitomo is installing equipment based on PET or PEN film type tools, which are based on electrode patterning of a barrier film.  According to Sumitomo, its initial application for flexible type OLED lighting will be public and retail stores.  Sumitomo explained that producing beyond correlated color temperatures level of 3000K of an OLED lighting panel is a difficult task for OLED lighting production because of the blue material lifetime issue.  However, Sumitomo believes that the company could develop an OLED lighting, featuring 4000K CCT (correlated color temperatures) by year 2020.