OLEDWorks, a leading manufacturer of OLED lighting panels, and BASF’s Coatings division joined forces to develop the world’s brightest bendable OLED panels. The result is a new product that enables an improved efficacy while having still the good color rendering and high brightness option. In addition to the new bendable version, completely new application spaces will be possible for luminaire makers and lighting designers.
The OLED lighting technology is very thin and lightweight and offers the ideal light quality for professional and residential lighting and design options for automotive lighting. To increase the capabilities of OLED lighting as design elements, bendable panels are required to make shaped or curved luminaires. “Our products are globally renowned for their high quality and functionality. We already offer the brightest and most reliable OLED panels in the world – and now we are going one step further and increase our portfolio by adding flexibility thanks to BASF’s unique barrier solutions,” stated Wolfgang Görgen, Managing Director at OLEDWorks.
The high-performance encapsulation protects the panels from degradation through water or oxygen, both present in ambient air, and provides an optical transparency of more than 90 %. In close interaction with the lighting company, BASF has developed barrier materials which are crucial to realize flexible thin-film encapsulation for OLED lighting and display application. The new panels use the materials as planarization layer to enable highly reliable thin-film encapsulation.
“We are delighted to work together and provide our expertise and technology to develop an innovative product. Our barrier solutions provide comparable barrier protection as glass. But unlike glass, thin-film encapsulation using BASF barrier materials is flexible, lightweight and break-resistant, offering new possibilities for product design and increased reliability in manufacturing for OLED lighting and display customers,” said Stephan Klotz, head of Functional Films – NOVAGA at BASF’s Coatings division.