OVERVIEW

Since Edison’s development of the incandescent light bulb in 1879, its energy efficiency has not improved beyond 4% — equivalent to about 12 lumens/Watt (lm/W). Consequently, the light bulb is losing favor here in the U.S. and around the world. In fact, plans are under way to ban and/or phase them out altogether. Fluorescent tubes, capable of up to 90 lm/W, offer color qualities that are undesirable for many applications and present numerous environmental and disposal issues because they contain mercury. Thanks to Universal Display’s breakthrough PHOLED technology, the next-generation revolution in lighting is on its way.

UniversalWOLED™ white OLED lighting has the potential to reach 150 lm/W. In the past few years, we have made tremendous progress toward this goal. After announcing a new record of 72 lm/W at the Society for Information Display Symposium in May 2008, we continued to make significant advances in this area. In June 2008, our team achieved a major milestone of 102 lm/W. This milestone is further evidence of the potential of whte OLEDs to offer significant energy savings and environmental benefits to end users around the world. With lighting accounting for over 8% of our energy consumption in the U.S., WOLEDs could have real impact on reducing energy consumption.

Already, WOLEDs have sparked keen interest from the lighting and display industries and emboldened designers and developers to consider using them in novel ways. All thanks to attractive performance features, which include:

• High power efficiency
• Bright, uniform white color quality
• Color tunability and dimmability
• Innovative form factor
• Environmental friendliness

Given the trends in development and ongoing support of the U.S. Department of Energy, the outlook for WOLED technology in lighting is bright.