Glowing walls and roll-up displays may lie in our future, thanks to organic light-emitting diodes. And for bringing this future closer, a team from Dresden has won the German Future Prize.
For Karl Leo, a German physicist, the future of lighting is within reach.
In fact, it’s lying on his laboratory table, in the form of a four-by-four centimeter plate of glass. The ultra-thin square begins to glow when the researcher connects a current, allowing electricity to flow through it.
The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems in the eastern Germany city of Dresden. Leo, who is the institute’s director, prophesies a bright future for the flat lamps.
“One vision would involve the OLED attached like wallpaper on the ceiling, generating light,” notes the 51-year-old physicist. “You could, for example, retrofit windows with a sheath containing both lighting and solar cells.”
On Wednesday, Leo and his team were awarded the German Future Prize (Deutscher Zukunftspreis), among the most prestigious for science and technology in Germany. The annual prize, which has been awarded by the German government since 1997, comes with a 250,000 euro ($324,000) award to promote commercial applications for such innovative ideas. via DW-World
December 16, 2011
