With the use of printing methods, Panasonic is going to develop OLED lighting panels. Panasonic has presented a prototype of the lighting panel at the 2009 Printable Electronics held from 18th to 20th February.
The organic semiconductors are partially made by printing processes. The lighting panel is said to have Color Rendering Index (CRI) of 95 and luminance efficiency of 40lm/W. When the panel has 1,000cd/m2 luminance, the half-life is more than 20,000 hours. It has quantum efficiency of 36.1%.
A printing procedure called slit coating method is used to manufacture the semiconductor known as ‘hole injecting layer’. This method was preferred as it was compatible with the material used for the ‘hole injecting method’.
The slit coating method has been in use for manufacturing the color filters of LCD panels. Panasonic is using modified equipment supplied by its partner Tazmo Co Ltd. This lighting panel has luminance efficiency equivalent to fluorescent lights. This is going to revolutionize the existing OLED technologies with invention of newer efficient products.