After only two years of development, Osram has achieved record values in the laboratory for warm white OLEDs. With an efficiency of 46 lm/W, the company says the OLED lighting applications have a brightness of 1000 cd/m2 and last more than 5000 hours.

"Our development team has reached a real milestone for warm white OLEDs with an efficiency of 46 lm/W (CIE of 0.46/0.42 measured in the integrating sphere) and a life of more than 5000 hours," said Karsten Heuser, Director of OLED Lighting Technology at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors. "With this significant increase in efficiency and life, OLED flat light sources are approaching the values of conventional lighting solutions and are therefore becoming attractive for a wide variety of applications."

The color rendering index of the almost 100 cm2 large prototype is 80. According to Osram, by March 2009 development should be so advanced that a demonstrator for an energy-saving OLED flat light module comprising several tiles will be able to deliver an overall luminous flux of 500 lm from a power consumption of less than 10 W.

These results were achieved as part of the "500 lm Multi-OLED Module" project under the European OPAL (Organic Phosphoresce Diodes for Applications on the Lighting Market) research consortium. This project is focusing on the optimization of the layer system comprising small molecules, in which the layers are produced by means of vacuum evaporation. In addition to Osram, this project involves Siemens Corporate Technology, the universities in Darmstadt, Braunschweig, and Augsburg and the IPMS Dresden.

The purpose of OPAL is to create a research platform to develop the underlying technology blocks for subsequent series production of OLEDs and their widespread marketing in the future. As the coordinator, Osram is working at full pace on the development of high-efficiency OLED light sources that consume little energy.