Recently, the US Department of Energy (DOE) awarded "Significant Achievement Prize" to PPG Industries for its outstanding contribution to the promotion of the development of OLED lighting technology. PPG R & D team successfully developed a kind of integrated float glass substrate, which adopts upgradable light extraction technology and transparent conducting thin film to apply to OLED lighting.

The project, which was launched by DOE in 2010 and lasted for two years, is intended to promote the commercialization and mass production of OLED lighting. Compared with the traditional display-level indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass substrate, this brand new research result has significant advantage in cost and performance. Light extraction technology can be used in combination with traditional float glass manufacturing process to effectively improve the device efficiency.

Vice President of Plate Glass Business Unit DickBeuke expressed that the research helps to construct homes and buildings with energy efficiency and environmental protection. The brightness of OLED lighting per watt can even quadruple that of incandescent bulb at most. Therefore, once the commercial use of this technology is comprehensively achieved, the energy consumption of household, building and workplace will be significantly reduced. In the field of solar energy, this technology can hopefully achieve electric power parity in photovoltaic industry.