OSRAM researchers and developers have taken a major step closer to the company's goal of developing mass-market OLEDs. A current laboratory sample achieves 87lm/W, which exceeds the previously-achieved peak value by 40 percent.

This means that OLEDs are almost achieving the efficiency of fluorescent lamps in the laboratory. Important: measurement is performed under application-oriented conditions in an integrating sphere - that is, without macro extractors, i.e. lenses to optimise the measurement results. Measurements were taken at a brightness of 1 000cd/m2 and a colour temperature of approximately 4 000 K. In a further success for the OSRAM research team: the laboratory sample also achieved almost 75Im/W at a brightness of 5 000cd/m2. The organic functional material employed has already been tested in pilot manufacturing and enables product-relevant lifetimes.

The OLED laboratory sample was prepared using a pure thin-film approach. The current was distributed evenly over the active surface using a special injection electrode on the light-generating surface and offers homogenous light density from every angle. The aesthetic impression is not disrupted by visible electrode structures. The manufacture of the sample is highly product-proximate and plans for industrialisation are already being evaluated.

"We have made a key breakthrough with the laboratory sample. For the first time we have managed to obtain such high efficiency whilst retaining both aesthetic and technological characteristics such as lifetime, robustness and extreme flatness in a thin-film approach. In other words, we have given the panel the characteristics that are central for future series production," says Thomas Dobbertin, head of OLED technology at OSRAM.

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