OLEDWORKS LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 09b

Description

The OLED lighting market requires significant acceleration to realize its promise of expanding SSL adoption, saving energy and creating US manufacturing jobs. The major barriers slowing the adoption of OLED lighting today are the relatively high cost and lower performance relative to LED lighting. Costs will come down by economies-of-scale as volumes grow, and OLED materials are becoming less expensive as OLED display volumes grow. However, innovations are needed to reduce the cost of substrates and to enable lower cost roll-to-roll (R2R) processing methods, while at the same time improving the energy efficiency of OLED lighting. In this project, OLEDWorks will develop a high efficacy and cost-effective flexible OLED lighting system which will reduce the cost of OLED light by introducing a combination of printable and scalable internal light extraction and transparent conductive silver nanowire technologies that are compatible with R2R methods, and demonstrate these technical advances on bendable glass and flexible plastic substrates. Higher power efficacy will be achieved by co-optimization of the internal extraction, silver nanowire anode, and stacked white OLED to reduce unwanted absorption, increase the outcoupling efficiency, and lower the OLED voltage. Through co-optimization of these component systems, world-class power efficacy of 100 lm/W or greater can be demonstrated in a flexible OLED lighting panel. During Phase I, two versions of a printable internal extraction layer (IEL) system available from development partners will be demonstrated on a bendable substrate using a small-scale OLED device format. After initial assessment on the industry standard indium tin oxide (ITO) anode, the IEL will be demonstrated in combination with the alternate silver nanowire anode to produce OLED samples with 90 lm/W efficacy. Improved organic materials will be implemented in a stacked white OLED architecture and combined with the improved IEL and anode component technologies to demonstrate an efficacy of 100 lm/W. In Phase II, this technology will be further optimized and scaled up, and commercial product platforms will be developed and launched that use this technology from our Rochester manufacturing facility. The technological advances developed in this program will enable bendable OLED lighting, which is expected to unleash creativity and create pull from the lighting design community, with higher performance and affordability. This innovative project will significantly help the OLED solid-state lighting industry grow, leading to energy savings in the multi-billions of dollars resulting from significant reduction in electricity consumption due to lighting. The technology developed in this project will also help the US compete in the growing OLED industry thereby creating US manufacturing jobs and maintaining a technological advantage in the field of solid-state lighting.