Lumiotec and Universal Display announce technology license agreement for OLED lighting

YAMAGATA, JAPAN & EWING, USA: Lumiotec Inc., founded by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd, Rohm Co. Ltd, Toppan Printing Co. Ltd, and Mitsui & Co. Ltd in 2008 to develop, manufacture and sell OLED lighting panels, and Universal Display Corp., enabling energy-efficient displays and lighting with its UniversalPHOLED technology and materials, announced that the companies have entered into an OLED technology license agreement.

Under the new agreement, Lumiotec will be licensed to integrate Universal Display's proprietary UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent and other OLED technologies and materials into OLED lighting products.

"We are pleased to be ready for world's first mass production of high-efficiency OLED lighting panels through collaboration with Universal Display," said Hisao Shigenaga, president of Lumiotec. "This is a major breakthrough in the OLED lighting industry. We hope to further strengthen our partnership with Universal Display and have a strong position as a leading player of the next-generation lighting."

"We are pleased to enter into this arrangement with Lumiotec, the world's first company established to be exclusively dedicated to the manufacture and sale of OLED lighting panels," said Steven V. Abramson, president and CEO of Universal Display.

"It is a very positive sign for the emerging OLED lighting industry to have Lumiotec, with industry-leading founders like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Rohm, Toppan Printing and Mitsui & Co., committed to making and selling high-performance OLED lighting products. Universal Display looks forward to continuing to work with Lumiotec to accelerate their efforts in bringing energy-efficient OLED lighting products to the market using our high-efficiency phosphorescent OLED technology and materials."

Under the license agreement, Universal Display grants Lumiotec license rights under various patents and associated know-how owned or controlled by Universal Display for Lumiotec to manufacture and sell certain OLED products for lighting applications. Lumiotec will pay Universal Display license fees and running royalties on its sales of these licensed products under the agreement. The term of the agreement runs through December 31, 2015.

Universal Display separately agreed to sell to Lumiotec certain OLED materials for use by Lumiotec in manufacturing OLED products as authorized under the agreement.

Combining Lumiotec's multi-photon emission device technology with UniversalPHOLED technology and materials, Lumiotec will establish mass production capability of high luminance, long lifetime, and high-efficiency OLED lighting panels. Lumiotec will start to deliver in February 2012 mainly 145 x 145 mm square sized, warm white color, and 40 lm/W OLED lighting sample panels and in April mass production models. Lumiotec also continues to develop natural white color, high-efficient OLED lighting panels, aiming at the release in the same year.

OLED lighting has the potential to lower global energy demands and lessen the environmental impacts associated with lighting. It has been estimated that by 2016, 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 US alone.

Recent advances in OLED lighting, including those made by Universal Display, now allow OLEDs to meet a variety of niche lighting performance targets and to demonstrate the potential for OLEDs to achieve general lighting targets established by the US Department of Energy. Universal Display's phosphorescent OLED technology and materials have demonstrated a four-to-one power advantage over other OLED technologies, resulting in record energy-efficient OLEDs.

In addition, OLED lighting may enable a range of exciting new product concepts with innovative form factors, transparency and flexibility.