A Light Bulb Went Off: Print the Lights

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/a-light-bulb-w...

March 11, 2008, 4:05 pm

A Light Bulb Went Off: Print the Lights

By Claudia H Deutsch
Light Bulb

Print publications are migrating to the Internet, but it seems lighting is migrating to the printing press.

General Electric just announced that it may have found the holy grail for lighting devices: A way to use a roll-to-roll process to print a continuous stream of organic light-emitting diodes — usually just called O.L.E.D.s — at a fraction of the usual cost to make them.

O.L.E.D.s are thin, organic materials sandwiched between two electrodes, which illuminate when an electrical charge is applied. They do not need any kind of backlighting to work, so they use a minimum of energy and can be wafer thin. O.L.E.D.s made with Kodak technology are already in car dashboards and cameras, and Sony just came out with an 11-inch television.

But most of those O.L.E.D.s are made of glass, and produced in small batches. They are far too expensive to use for lighting a room.

...

Not yet ready for prime time...

http://www.ge.com/research/grc_7_1_35.html
http://www.ge.com/research/grc_2_9_1.html

[Ian David]

1. Can you make condoms out of the stuff, too? Whoo-hoo! n/t

[Javaman]

2. Yup, they are ready...

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Prod...