420 Lumen LED

[Boss]

September 19, 2007 - Seoul Semiconductor (KOSDAQ; 046890), the eighth-largest LED manufacturer in the world, announced today that its R&D team has achieved the industry's highest brightness single LED at 400 lumens. Seoul Semiconductor's high performance LED is significantly brighter than conventional single LED which can only emit up to 100 lumens. Seoul Semiconductor's high performance LED is the next-generation lighting source and is expected to accelerate the conversion of conventional lighting to LEDs.The higher brightness and successful miniaturization of Seoul Semiconductor's latest LED technology translates to substantial cost savings for customers. Seoul Semiconductor's single package product emitting up to 420 lumens at 600 mA at maximum and 350 lumens at average, is the world highest brightness among conventional LEDs at the level of 8 watt. The size is ultra slim, similar to that of a single LED package emitting 100 lumens. In addition, the brightness of Seoul Semiconductor's new product at 420 lumens is comparable to that of more than four conventional LEDs. The new LED technology's ultra-compact size coupled with the higher performance at 420 lumens gives engineers greater design flexibility and substantially lowers the cost of the application. By contrast conventional LED severely limits the design options available to engineers as more units are required to attain the same level performance.

Seoul Semoconductor's new LED with 420 lumens​

"The competition in the LED industry is heating up as customers increasingly demand brighter and smaller products," said Yanghee Han, vice president of sales and marketing at Seoul Semiconductor. "Seoul Semiconductor's high performance LED technology at 420 lumens enables the company to not only satisfy the high expectations of the marketplace but it also opens up a new market where conventional LEDs are excluded due to its inherent performance limitations."

Seoul Semiconductor has been able to concurrently achieve technology capable of delivering higher performance at a more compact architecture. This milestone is a result of Seoul Semiconductor's consistent investment in research and development, and focus and commitment to position itself as a world leading LED manufacturer. Seoul Semiconductor is already the leading LED manufacturer in South Korea.

Seoul Semiconductor's high performance LED can be used for universal applications such as general residential lighting, automotive headlights, architectural lighting, headlight for task, streetlight, torch lighting, camping lighting, and signage lighting.

The higher performance, compact architecture and cost advantages afforded by Seoul Semiconductor's new LED technology will enable the company to penetrate markets that are inaccessible and beyond the reach of conventional LEDs. This suggests that the application area for the technology is unlimited. Seoul Semiconductor is planning to commercialize this new product by the fourth quarter, 2007.

 

[Boss]

GE Demonstrates World’s First “Roll-to-Roll” Manufactured Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs)

March 12, 2008 - GE Global Research, the centralized research organization of General Electric (NYSE: GE), and GE Consumer & Industrial, today announced the successful demonstration of the world’s first roll-to-roll manufactured organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting devices. This demonstration is a key step toward making OLEDs and other high performance organic electronics products at dramatically lower costs than what is possible today.

OLEDs are thin, organic materials sandwiched between two electrodes, which illuminate when an electrical charge is applied. They represent the next evolution in lighting products. Their widespread design capabilities will provide an entirely different way for people to light their homes or businesses. Moreover, OLEDs have the potential to deliver dramatically improved levels of efficiency and environmental performance, while achieving the same quality of illumination found in traditional products in the marketplace today with less electrical power.

“Researchers have long dreamed of making OLEDs using a newspaper-printing like roll-to-roll process,” said Anil Duggal, manager of GE’s Advanced Technology Program in Organic Electronics. “Now we’ve shown that it is possible. Commercial applications in lighting require low manufacturing costs, and this demonstration is a major milestone on our way to developing low cost OLED lighting devices.”

Duggal continued, “Beyond OLEDS, this technology also could have broader impact in the manufacturing of other organic electronic devices such as organic photovoltaics for solar energy conversion, sensors and roll-up displays.”

“For businesses, architects, lighting designers and anyone interested in pushing the envelope to achieve increasingly energy-efficient lighting — and vastly expanded lighting design capabilities — today marks the day that viable, commercialized OLED lighting solutions are coming into view,” said Michael Petras, GE Consumer & Industrial’s Vice President of Electrical Distribution and Lighting. “We have more work to do before we can give customers access to GE-quality OLED solutions, but it’s now easier to envision OLEDs becoming another high-efficiency GE offering, like LEDs, fluorescent or halogen.”

The demonstration of a low-cost, roll-to-roll process for OLED lighting represents the successful completion of a four-year, $13 million research collaboration among GE Global Research, Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENER) and the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The goal of the collaboration was to demonstrate a cost-effective system for the mass production of organic electronics products such as flexible electronic paper displays, portable TV screens the size of posters, solar powered cells and high-efficiency lighting devices.

ECD Senior Vice President Nancy Bacon said, “This program was a major step in developing high volume roll-to-roll manufacturing for OLEDs and other organic semiconductor devices. The success of this program is testimony to the effectiveness of NIST’s advanced technology program model, and our 20-year history of pioneering research in roll-to-roll technology. We currently are utilizing this technology to mass produce our flexible, durable and lightweight UNI-SOLAR brand solar laminates. ECD looks forward to continuing collaboration with GE to further develop this technology for future commercialization.”

GE researchers provided the organic electronics technology and were responsible for developing the roll-to-roll processes, while ECD provided its unique roll-to-roll equipment-building expertise to build the machine that manufactures the OLED devices. The machine is being utilized for further manufacturing research at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna.

The development of this low cost roll-to-roll manufacturing process has the potential to eliminate the manufacturing hurdles that currently exist in preventing a more widespread adoption of high performance organic electronics technologies such as OLED lighting. The unique commercial equipment and technology needed to enable high performance-based organic electronics products does not currently exist. The few organic electronics products on the market today are made with more conventional batch processes and are relatively high cost. A roll-to-roll manufacturing infrastructure that enables high performance and low cost devices will allow a more widespread adoption of organic electronics products.