What if the light bulb of the future wasn't a bulb at all? That's what scientists at GE Global Research are betting on in the Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) program. Their goal? Roll-to-roll sheets of paper-thin flexible plastic that provide an entirely new way to light your home or business. Imagine wallpaper that lights up. Thinking outside the "light bulb," GE scientists are making great progress with OLEDs, to develop a whole new and efficient way to light homes and businesses.

OLEDs are very thin sheets of polymers or plastic materials that illuminate if an electrical charge is applied. OLED technology currently is finding its way into commercial applications in display applications like cell phones and laptop screens, but GE scientists are taking the technology to the next level to use OLEDs in general illumination applications, which presents a different set of challenges than displays. The major technical hurdles are efficiency, brightness, quality of light and life.

But we're already making great progress. GE has the world record for white OLEDs in size, brightness, quality of light and efficiency. We've already surpassed the efficiency of an incandescent bulb and have set our sites on toppling the highly efficient fluorescent lighting market. So the company that was co-founded by Thomas Edison is hoping to make his most famous invention a thing of the past. But we don't think he'd want it any other way.

OLED Research Focus

Light Emitting Polymer Development

Synthetic polymer chemists are developing new light emitting polymers that will be more efficient and have longer life than those currently available.

Flexible Electronics

Developing flexible substrates that enable high performance flexible electronics without silicon. Technologies include the development of new transparent plastic films with high temperature capability and novel approaches to flexible thin-film transistor arrays.

Barrier Films

Developing ultra-high barrier coatings to prevent diffusion of air and water. These coatings make use of unique, high throughput multilayer PECVD coating methods.

OLED Lighting Device Design

Designing new device structures that enable high efficiency and fault-tolerance to enable (use deliver in place of the second enable) large area and high brightness. A key component to progress here has been a healthy effort to understand the detailed device physics of OLED operation.

Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing

Designing new low-cost manufacturing techniques similar to a newspaper production line to create mass production of OLED devices. This is a unique challenge, because it requires the coupling of very new technology (OLEDs) with very old technology (the printing press).

Organic Photovoltaic Design

It turns out that if you slightly modify the basic OLED device architecture, you get an organic photovoltaic device that can convert light energy into electricity. All of the technologies listed above also are being applied to developing organic photovoltaic devices optimized for energy generation. The end application being targeted is a low-cost roll-to-roll sheet of plastic photovoltaic sheets that could be used as roofing materials on homes and businesses to act as a clean, renewable source of energy.