Universal Display Awarded Two New U.S. Department of Energy SBIR Phase I Grants for White Phosphorescent OLED Lighting

Universal Display Corporation announced that the company has been awarded two new Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I $100,000 programs from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Under these two contracts, Universal Display will seek to demonstrate further advances in the performance of white OLEDs and continue to work towards achieving the DOE’s solid- state lighting commercial targets.

In the first of the two contracts, Universal Display proposes to demonstrate a very high-efficiency white PHOLED lighting device. Through the use of its highly-efficient UniversalPHOLED technology and materials, enhanced host and transport materials, and high index substrates, Universal Display’s goal is to demonstrate further gains in power efficiency, exceeding its prior research milestone of 102 lumens per watt.

In the second award, Universal Display proposes to demonstrate a white PHOLED using the company’s novel OLED permeation barrier technology. The company, working with Princeton University, recently demonstrated a material system that forms an ultra-hermetic, flexible and transparent environmental barrier for OLEDs. This may provide a cost-effective packaging solution for high-volume, low-cost manufacture of white OLED lighting devices.

“Based on our proprietary high-efficiency phosphorescent OLED technology, white OLEDs have demonstrated the potential to meet the requirements of a growing number of specialty lighting applications,” said Steven Abramson, president and CEO of Universal Display. “These two new programs are intended to support continued advances in white OLED performance as well as the drive to lower the OLED cost structure toward the U.S. Department of Energy’s longer-term commercial targets for general lighting.”

The DOE has made a long-term commitment to advance the development and introduction of energy-efficient white lighting sources for general illumination. According to industry estimates, electric bills for lighting alone are more than $200 billion per year on a worldwide basis. It has been estimated that by 2016, white OLEDs could generate well over $20 billion in worldwide savings of electricity costs and could save over nine million metric tons of carbon emissions from the U.S. alone.