OLEDs at 100 lm/W

[saabluster]

Of course this is only a R+D piece but still pretty amazing. I was not expecting these kind of results even in the lab for another year or two.


http://www.ledsmagazine.com/news/5/6/23

 

[IMSabbel]

You have to consider that this is apples and oranges, though.

For some things, OLED will be vastly superior to normal ones, for others they will be useless.

Flashlights belong to the latter category.

(reason: Current densities in OLEDs are VERY low. And high power densities would age them like crazy).
Note that the 100 l/W were archived with a brightness of 1000cd/m^2.
If you assume hemispherical emittance pattern, this amounts to about 2500 lumen on a area of 1 m^2.
Compare this to a Q5 Cree, where you get about 125 lumen out of 1mm^2 at 100lm/W. Thats a factor of 500000 higher surface brightness

 

[saabluster]

You have to consider that this is apples and oranges, though.

For some things, OLED will be vastly superior to normal ones, for others they will be useless.

Flashlights belong to the latter category.

Obviously it would not be good in any flashlight you wanted to project but this could work very well for something like a camping lantern. You could even make a flood flashlight that uses a clear polymer tube with an OLED wrapped around the inside. The batteries would fit nicely just inside of the OLED sleeve. This would make a very nice trail light to help you see the path around you. Imagine two of these where the OLED wraps around about 70% of the tube. The blank spot would be up against your body strapped into a simple holster. With one of these on both sides of your hips you would have a VERY nice light to light the path by. This would also allow your hands to be free to hold a dedicated thrower.

So basically I would have to disagree with you that it is useless for flashlights.

 

[LukeA]

So basically I would have to disagree with you that it is useless for flashlights.

Not useless for portable lighting, but useless for flashlights of the type typically discussed here.

 

[saabluster]

Not useless for portable lighting, but useless for flashlights of the type typically discussed here.

People are always talking about wanting a pure flood light. For instance McGizmo's Mule and Sundrop. True this accounts for a very small amount of the lights here but it is still something many people want. An additional advantage of my idea is fewer cast shadows. This can help you judge the surface of a rocky trail better than if the light emanates from a small spot.

 

[LukeA]

People are always talking about wanting a pure flood light. For instance McGizmo's Mule and Sundrop. True this accounts for a very small amount of the lights here but it is still something many people want. An additional advantage of my idea is fewer cast shadows. This can help you judge the surface of a rocky trail better than if the light emanates from a small spot.

I completely agree, diffuse flood is much, much more useful than flood emanating from a tiny source. The diffuse shadows are much nicer to look at than the sharp point-source shadows of single emitters.

 

[baterija]

After reading the posts, before looking at the article, I was thinking fixed building lighting. Funny enough that seems to be the focus of the research. Definitely an interesting new development.