LG Display has made headlines in many technology blogs in recent days. At CES the company announced plans for its OLED TVs, now the buzz is about a shatterproof flexible OLED panel that LG will be producing from July 2015. While this was very exciting news, the issue with it was that there were two different interpretations of the news on the internet. One report described a flexible OLED display and the other a flexible OLED lighting panel. For some that may be the same concept (related to the “photons out” part), but for us this makes a big difference.
The following image shows what the panel looks like.
The picture does clearly show a lighting panel – the power clips are a clear give away. The new plastic-based OLED light panel are quoted as having 60lm/W efficiency, 75lm light output, 3,000K in color temperature, and a CRI over 85. Engineering samples are available at $250 per panel. The mass production of the flexible panel is scheduled to begin in July 2015.
While these panels could be theoretically used as backlights, the light output will be way too low for that application.
As it turns out, the excitement about a fully flexible OLED display is a little early and the lighting panel will actually be produced by LG Chem and not LG Display for the moment.
