S.Korea's LG Chem to foster OLED lighting as new growth engine

LG Chem, South Korea's leading chemical firm, said Thursday that it will foster an OLED lighting panel as new growth engine as the fledgling OLED lighting market is expected to replace LED lighting.

The company held a press conference in central Seoul, saying OLED lighting panels will become a significant part of the lighting industry in coming years. OLED stands for organic light emitting diode.

LG Chem has researched and manufactured OLED lighting products in the past 15 years, unveiling a plastic-based flexible OLED lighting panel in January.

The 320320mm size panel, which is the largest available lighting panel in the world, has a higher flexibility than any that came before. Because it is made of plastic instead of glass, it was prevented from being shattered.

There have been barriers to using plastic as material, such as low luminous efficiency, but the company overcame the barrier. The flexible panel has an efficiency of 60 lumen per watt (lm/W), making it available for general use.

In late 2014, LG Chem rolled out an OLED lighting panel that can compete with LED lighting. The new panel has a luminous efficiency of 100 lm/W, much higher than an average efficiency of about 60 lm/W for those released by global lighting companies such as Osram, Philips and Panasonic.

The company aims to raise the luminous efficiency for its OLED lighting panels to 120 lm/W by the end of 2015 and to 130 lm/W in 2016. Endi