Nov 11 2010
Cambrios Technologies Corporation and Plextronics, Inc. announced today that they have entered into collaboration to develop a cost-effective, high performance material that could improve the manufacturing process and quality of lighting products based on organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs).
The collaboration is funded, in part, through an assistance agreement with the Department of Energy (DOE) Solid State Lighting (SSL) program.
In the project, Plextronics’ proprietary Plexcore® OC material, which functions as a key component of OLEDs known as the hole injection layer (HIL), will be applied on top of Cambrios’ proprietary ClearOhm™ material that creates a transparent electrode to form a transparent conducting hole injection (TCHI) electrode.
Lighting accounts for a significant amount of energy consumption in today’s world. In 2001, lighting amounted to more than 20 percent of the total electricity in the U.S. Solid-state lighting is widely expected to provide higher efficiency light sources, while eventually moving to a much lower cost.
OLEDs could potentially be the lowest cost solution to high efficiency lighting. Steady progress toward commercialization has been made in recent years. The use of traditional transparent conductors is expected to be a major impediment for broad adoption of OLED-based, solid-state lighting due to cost, and therefore, the industry is actively seeking alternatives that are based on high-throughput, low-temperature manufacturing processes.
"This is a program about optimizing two technologies to meet the DOE’s OLED lighting roadmap for performance and cost. We believe that innovation focused on bringing the benefits of these technologies and tailoring them for the OLED industry will ultimately help facilitate the path to affordable OLED lighting," said Plextronics CEO Andy Hannah.
“The Plextronics HIL is clearly a technology leader and is being adopted in OLED development programs by many of the companies we know,” said Dr. Michael Knapp, President and CEO of Cambrios. “Working together with Plextronics on this DOE solid-state lighting program is a great opportunity to develop a more complete materials solution with strong commercial potential in this exciting energy efficiency sector.”
The period of performance for this assistance agreement will be for two years commencing on April 16, 2010.