Scientists at GE Global Research are continuing to draw notice for their work in two next-generation lighting projects. On the one hand are thin, flexible OLEDs that may one day wallpaper rooms with thin sheets of light or illuminate the safety gear worn by your local firefighter. They’ve again caught the attention of the Department of Energy, which is interested in accelerating GE’s work to develop a “roll to roll” low-cost manufacturing process that would allow factories to make them just like giant rolls of newsprint. On the other hand are LEDs — which are already widely sold today but may soon be even more efficient and come in more colors thanks to materials research currently underway.
Getting closer: U.S. Department of Energy awards went to 17 lighting research projects, including two to GE for OLED research, above, and more efficient LEDs.
GE has already completed the world’s first demonstration of a roll-to-roll manufacturing process for OLED lighting – and the new award is for the next phase of development. As GE’s Anil Duggal, OLED lighting program leader, says in the latest issue of Fast Company: “GE has committed to offering OLED lighting sheets as early as the end of 2010. But to make this a reality that’s good for our business, we need to produce more than 100 lumens per watt and a long lifetime, better than what fluorescents can do today. OLEDs can do it, but no one wants to pay for a lightbulb what you spend on a TV. Our challenge is to try to marry low cost with performance. We’re not going to have that solved in 2010, but we’re hoping we’ll be there in 2015.”
Meanwhile, LEDs — which were invented by GE scientists in the early 1960s, are being taken to the next level with the help of the new D.O.E. award. GE researchers are focusing on the development of new phosphor materials that help LEDs meet the color quality and efficiency required for general lighting. As Popular Mechanics just wrote: “The majority of LED fixtures and devices make icy white-blue light, ‘and things don’t look that vibrant under that white light,’ says Anant Setlur, a materials scientist at General Electric. However, these white-light LEDs very efficiently convert electrical energy into light. So the goal is to lower blue LEDs’ color temperature into more reddish and warm values.” Phosphors absorb light, the magazine explains, and then re-emit the light with the desired lighting characteristics.
* Read “17 Projects Shaping the Future of LED Lights” in Popular Mechanics
* Read “How GE Creates Sheets of OLED Light” in Fast Company
* Read Anil’s Global Research blog about the projects
* Learn about the phosphors research in Anant Setlur’s Global Research blog
* View our audio slide show interview with Anil
* Read more Global Research stories on GE Reports
