Industry Journal

Compact, light, economical, colorful, versatile: For many years,

LEDs were considered rather boring and served mainly as a

means of showing whether an electrical appliance was on or

off. Today, they are hailed as the norm for tomorrow’s lighting.

Already, they illuminate entire halls, stadiums, and shopping

centers. And the day after tomorrow is just around the corner: in

the form of rollable displays, windows which turn into sources of

light at night, or electronic paper.

The future’s so bright

Industry Journal

The next generation of LEDs: Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are ultrathin, light-emitting construction elements that can be produced in transparent and pliable versions. An employee carries out a visual inspec-tion after the vapor-coating of the organic semiconductor material (right).

Industry Journal

Flexible, efficient, and versatile: researchers have been working on OLEDs since 1980, and in 2005 the first OLED screen was intro-duced. Experts predict a bright future for the technology – in the truest sense of the word. Osram introduced the first commer-cially available OLED table lamp in 2008. Designer Ingo Maurer cre-ated the Early Future, which is equipped with ten OLED elements (right).

The seven LED light steles of the Seven Screens digital light art project in front of Osram head-quarters in Munich are seven meters high and one meter wide (large photo).

Industry Journal

Bill Joy isn’t someone who needs to save money. He is, in fact, a rich man. As cofounder and lead developer of the IT giant Sun Microsystems, we have him to thank for technologies such as Java and TCP/IP. When the multimillionaire speaks of saving, for him it is more about energy than money: He wants to show the world what en-vironmentally friendly technology can do. His latest project is called Ethereal – a 190-foot eco-friendly superyacht. The boat is brimming with luxury, with a sauna, jacuzzi, and a small movie theater. Despite the mega-facilities, Joy’s yacht consumes only a fraction of the energy used by comparable boats. Joy has loaded his ship with the most efficient technologies, making the Ethereal one of the most environmentally friendly means of transportation afloat, and a showcase of marine energy efficiency.

Hybrid drive and LEDs

To achieve this he uses a modern hybrid drive and highly effective insulating material. How-ever, thousands of little lamps that light every corridor and cabin below deck provide most of the energy savings. These light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are the only artificial light on board. They produce bright, natural-looking light, and are both long-lasting and very economical. Be-cause they emit almost no heat, air-conditioning can also run in economy mode. This is Bill Joy’s hallmark: “Wasting energy is dumb,” says the environmentally conscious millionaire. “Saving energy makes life more pleasant.”

This opinion is shared by the European Union’s Latvian Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. He is one of the main people responsible for banning incandescent lightbulbs (see p. 7), a measure he describes as “groundbreaking” and

a “clear indication of the EU’s resolve to achieve its energy efficiency and climate protection goals.”

Replacing the luminous energy hogs

This is because lightbulbs are inefficient ener-gy guzzlers. Their job is to produce light – but instead they act more like a luminous radiator. Of the energy consumed by a lightbulb, 95 per-cent is generated as heat, with only five percent emitted as light. This drives electricity bills through the roof and harms the environment. More than 900 billion kilowatt-hours of electric-ity per year could be saved if people gave up the energy-guzzling lightbulb and switched to more efficient lighting methods. The potential savings are equal to half the power consumption of China.

Alternatives to the lightbulb have been around for a long time: LEDs are one environmentally friendly option. Because the energy that goes into light-emitting diodes is converted almost entirely into light, they consume up to 90 per-cent less electricity. With energy costs rising long term, this is more ecological and economical.

The city of Freiburg in Germany has recognized this. Seeking to reduce the high operating costs of traffic lights, the municipality looked at all the ways it could make savings – and they found the solution in the city’s gardening and civil en-gineering office. Horst Groth works here, and is responsible for all the city’s traffic lights. Groth is one of those government employees who see instructions to achieve savings not as a burden but as an entrepreneurial challenge. He has tried many ways of making his traffic lights more efficient. He switched more and

The Arch, a soccer stadium in Durban, South Africa, symbolizes the coming together of the fans. The 30-story arch is 350 meters long and weighs 2,600 tons. It is hollow, allowing installation and maintenance access to the lighting system. Together with local manufacturers, Osram developed a light which met the high requirements demanded of it (right).

This show car demonstrates what LED taillights look like. The new light source is also found in the headlights. Their advan-tage over xenon lights: a more natural color and lower energy consumption (left).

“Innovations by people”

Berit Wessler, Head of Innovation Management at the Osram Opto Semiconductors subsidiary, dis-cusses innovative formulas, the relationship between customer and product, and pleasant surprises.

How does Osram approach the process of developing new technologies?

One factor in our high level of innovation is clear-ly the fact that we make it a priority to provide an innovative environment for all employees – innova-tions are made by people. Various programs within the company create this environment and boost motivation. This includes informal meetings. Osram networks widely with universities and colleges, and also offers programs for doctoral students within the company.

What distinguishes a clever invention from a market-ready innovation?

Our task in innovation management is to harmonize new developments with the requirements of the market. It’s no good to anyone if we come up with

innovative technologies for which there is no de-mand. For instance, LEDs with excellent color ren- dering are somewhat less energy-efficient, for ex-ample. In this case, if we were to do everything we could to make the products as energy-efficient as technically possible, in many cases we would produ-ce things that don’t meet customer requirements. It’s not enough to just develop environmentally friendly technology. There also have to be people who want to use these technologies.

Has the rapid development of LEDs in recent years surprised you?

You could certainly say it has. Three years ago, very few of us would have believed that it would be pos-sible to operate car headlights entirely using LEDs so soon. As part of the TLW-LED project funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, which we worked on together with Audi, we even managed to develop LEDs for use in the main beam.

more of them off at night. Where possible, they were replaced with roundabouts. “But at some point we reached our limits, and it was not pos-sible to make any more savings in this way,” said Groth.

The civil engineer was less than happy with this realization and set out to find a solution. In his search, he hit upon LED technology. “LEDs have two major advantages for us: they are long- lasting and consume significantly less power. This takes the strain off our budget. Moreover, they are always clearly visible, no matter what the level of sunlight. This makes our roads sa-fer.” The new technology saves the city 100,000 Euros per year in maintenance costs and 50,000 Euros in electricity costs. Many municipalities in Europe have already followed Freiburg’s ex-ample.

The brilliant benefits of LEDs have boosted its market share to currently five percent. Experts at Osram estimate that by 2020, LEDs will ac-count for at least 40 percent of the lighting market. Osram CEO Martin Goetzeler is certain: “LEDs are the energy-efficient lighting of the future.”

Blue light leads to breakthrough The great potential of LEDs was not always so obvious. In the past, an LED was essentially a small, faint point of light to indicate the oper-ating status of electrical appliances. In the early 1990s, researchers marked the first milestone in the development of the LED: alongside the red and yellow light-emitting diodes, which had been around since the 1960s, they invented the blue LED, without which a white diode would never have become feasible.

In theory the combination of red, green, and blue can be mixed together to create every color. The color spectrum that LEDs have been able to produce since then has opened up entirely new applications. “For example, hotels can ad-just their lighting at conferences to match their business customers’ corporate colors,” said Andreas Siegmund, Marketing Communications Manager for LED Systems at Osram. “Depending on the customer, the conference table can be accented in Verizon red, Shell yellow or TNT orange.”

Industry Journal

Convincing figures

During this time, conventional lightbulbs would have to be replaced 25 times. Around 3,300 kilowatt-hours of primary energy is spent in the production and use of 25 lightbulbs. LEDs require just 700. LEDs are more energy-efficient in their production as well as during opera-tion. 25 lightbulbs consume a total of 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. So in Germany, the purchase price for 25 lightbulbs and the power they use adds up to around 235 Euros. A single Parathom LED lamp is sufficient to produce the same amount of light. It costs around 40 Euros – that’s 40 times the purchase cost of a single lightbulb, but the LED lamp uses just 20 per-cent of the electricity. Over its total lifespan, it consumes around 80 Euros worth of power. This represents a saving of almost 70 percent – not even counting the lower costs through the con-siderable work saved by not having to inspect and replace the lightbulbs. The LED solution also leads to less CO2 emissions. The amount of electricity needed to operate a conventional lightbulb causes 500 kilograms of CO2 emis- sions, compared to just 100 kilograms for an LED.

Louis Vuitton creates luxury settings with LEDs

Architects and interior decorators can use LEDs not only to illuminate rooms, but also to design them. Discerning customers recognize and ap-preciate this. The fashion manufacturer Louis Vuitton relies on exclusive design for their handbags, and naturally wants their shops to match the elegance of the brand. The company therefore installed light-emitting diodes in the windows of 300 stores from Paris to Tokyo to show their luxury products in the right light.

The project was implemented by Traxon Tech-nologies, a joint venture between Osram and an LED specialist from Hong Kong. Within a few years, the company has become one of the world’s largest suppliers of professional lighting solu-tions for hotels and retail areas. The fact that the company deals exclusively in LEDs is no coincidence. “LEDs have a number of advan-tages, especially when you’re working with col-ored lighting,” says Nicolai Wiest, CEO of Traxon Technologies. These advantages include the long life of LEDs, as a study of Osram and Siemens Corporate Technology proved. The latest genera-tion of LED lamps last at least 25,000 hours.

Industry Journal

In the factory at its Regensburg head-quarters, Osram Opto Semiconductors manufactures the key elements of the semi-conductor compo-nents – the chips.

At the Trafford Center shopping mall in Manchester, “High Power Flood” LEDs from Osram reduce energy and maintenance costs. The ceiling is lit and changes color depending on the outside weather conditions.

The think tankOsram’s US subsidiary Sylvania is constantly tapping into new groups of buyers with creative products.

Osram Sylvania’s Customer Lifestyle Solutions (CLS) division has turned into a productive think tank that has developed many marketable products such as the mobile LED light, the DOT-it. This is a round light the size of a hockey puck, equipped with three high-power LEDs and powered by batteries. It can be attached to almost any surface with a magnetic or adhesive backing and can be removed without tools. A hit for hobby room, RVs, boats, and anywhere where installing an additional light would normally involve great expense. DOT-it has become a world-wide bestseller. Nowadays, CLS brings as many as ten new products a year to market – from the LED shower head to the illuminated table runner.

For more information: www.sylvania.com

Industry Journal

From glimmer to glitz

In the past LEDs only managed a rather weak glimmer, and were therefore unsuitable for lighting rooms or paths. Today they can emit light bright enough to illuminate entire ware-houses, thanks to the German physicist Klaus Streubel. Ten years ago he joined the Siemens subsidiary Osram. His mission: to increase the light output of LEDs. It was a difficult task: At the time, much of an LED’s light was absorbed within the diode before emerging to the out-side. As a result, LEDs were never very bright. Streubel looked for a way to prevent this, and ended up coating the inside of the diode to cause the light to shine in only one direction – outwards. “We knew that it could work, but for a long time we weren’t sure if we would ever be able to produce larger quantities with this technology,” recalls Streubel. “The first two years were frustrating.” In 2001 he achieved a breakthrough. The prototypes worked, and the production machines were ready to roll. Streu-bel then presented his results at a conference. “When developers from competing companies began bombarding me with questions, I knew we were onto something really big.”

German Future Award from the President

Streubel wasn’t the only one to recognize this: In December 2007, he and his colleagues won the Ger-man Future Award, which was presented by German President Horst Köhler. Streubel’s invention marked a turning point: “We can now also use light-emitting diodes even where very strong light is needed,” said Volker Härle, Director of Marketing at Osram Opto Semiconductors. One of the biggest challenges were car headlamps, which have to illuminate the road for a hundred yards or more even on the darkest nights. In 2008, the improved light output of LEDs made it possible for the first LED headlights to be installed as standard in the speedy Audi R8 sports car and the brawny SUV, Cadillac Escalade Platinum.

The advantages of LEDs, already discovered by many companies, will soon become an interesting propo-sition in private homes as well. Osram anticipates that alternative sources of light will have almost entirely replaced conventional lightbulbs in private homes by 2015.

While energy-saving lightbulbs will mainly be used in the beginning, LEDs will assume dominance in the household by 2012 at the latest. Today they still

Stairs lit with DOT-its.

cost quite a lot in comparison to conventional light- bulbs. But: “Prices will drop significantly over the next few years,” predicts marketing expert Härle. However, the transition is likely to take several years. “LED solutions will not suddenly be put into opera-tion everywhere overnight,” says Osram CEO Martin Goetzeler. For a company such as Osram, whose product range will change radically with the demise of the lightbulb, this is a particular challenge. “The task will be to have the right products on the market in sufficient quantities and at competitive prices at the right time,” says Goetzeler.

Klaus Streubel and his team of developers are al-ready working on the products of the future. The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) should give the industry a further boost. OLEDs are semiconductors only a few nanometers thick which when supplied with electricity can be used to form a light-emitting surface. “As a large-surface light source, they are no substitute for normal LEDs, but can be a useful sup-plement,” says Streubel. OLEDs are already used to light cell phone displays and flat screen TVs. In the next few years, they should also become an essen-tial element in lighting: “For example, transparent OLEDs could be used in windows. During the day, they would allow sunlight to pass through, and at

night they would serve as a light source,” said Streu-bel. What sounds like science fiction could soon be-come a reality. Ten years ago, when Streubel waxed enthusiastic about the great potential of the normal LEDs many of his colleagues shook their heads in disbelief. This time, they’d better believe him.

Industry Journal

The cruise ship Celebrity Solstice achieves energy savings of over 15 percent with Osram’s highly efficient lighting system.