OLED is temporarily unable to shake the LED lighting market

OLEDs seem to struggle to define and spread their unique selling points, and there are problems with excessive price and poor performance compared to LED lighting, concluded by IDTechEx experts Norman Bardsley and Khasa Ghaffarzadeh. Unless there is an innovative design like Apple. In other words, in standard applications, OLEDs cannot compete with LEDs, but in areas where sleek design features are decisive factors, OLEDs are very promising. This can happen in hotels, retail stores and architectural lighting.

At the moment, the light effect drags the hind legs of the OLED. Traditional package-level LEDs typically have a light efficiency of 90-100 lm/W, while OLED modules have only 20-50 lm/W. Short life is another weakness of OLEDs. LEDs have a much longer working life than OLEDs. In fact, the working hours of LED lights are 50,000 hours. In comparison, the operating life of the OLED lighting package is 5000-15000 hours.

Cost is another key factor. LED package grades are priced at $5/klm, while monolithic luminaires are priced from $20 to $100klm. And OLED is far more expensive than this. In fact, at the price point of $300 to $500/klm (panel level), including luminaire design costs, OLED is not a cost-effective option. Although OLED suppliers often target products in specialized market segments – still high prices – OLED price issues are still attributable to technology. The encapsulation layer (barrier, bond and seal) and integrated substrate (transparent conductive layer, substrate and exit layer) remain the main cost drivers.

OLED lighting has high potential for large-area illumination, and it is also advantageous in terms of size, although most of the current OLED lighting applications are on hard glass. Despite this, OLED lighting is still in its infancy.

LED lighting projects are relatively more mature – and more money is being spent on LEDs than on OLEDs. However, many companies have recently become active in the field of OLED lighting, and investment is increasing. For this reason, experts predict that the price reduction of active materials will be very rapid.

The growth of O- LED displays will help the OLED lighting market, and over time the former will bring cheaper, higher performance devices to the latter – there will be overlaps in the supply chain. The challenges of OLED lighting applications cannot be solved solely by panel manufacturers.

LED lighting is essentially a point source, while OLED lighting is a planar illuminator, although OLED lighting seems to be competitive in this area, but not so obvious. This is because the combination of multiple LEDs and a wave guide can achieve efficient planar illumination. At the same time, most OLED production currently uses second-generation substrates.

Size (mechanical flexibility) is usually the main selling point. The reason why OLED technology is lagging behind is that the encapsulation laye is based on glass - but future advances in OLED displays in flexible barriers will help improve this situation. OLEDs also have the advantages of color temperature, low width and thickness.

IDTechEx predicts that OLED's market will increase to $1.3 billion in 2013 and will grow at a rate of 40-50% annually, although the market base is still small.