Regular readers know the LED and its organic OLED cousin are getting poised to compete with the compact florescent and incandescent light sources. The past few days has seen two OLED breakthroughs that are quite similar and worth a very close look.
Current OLEDs are made of glass substrates and encapsulated between two layers of glass to protect them from external factors like moisture. Researchers both academic and commercial are working towards replacing both the glass substrate and the encapsulation with flexible foils and thin film layers. Success at commercial scale would enable significant reduction of the production costs of OLEDs because the usage of plastics and flexible foils enables high-speed roll-to-roll fabrication.
Beyond the energy savings that LEDs and OLEDs offer, a thinner and flexible lightweight OLED would set up product design to letting any object in a home or office emit light, and even customized light patterns would become much more affordable.
So the research is very worthwhile. Now two teams are suggesting they have the answer.
Flip a coin to see who goes first . . .
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