Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation of Japan has announced the world's first toning/dimming type organic electroluminescent (EL) lighting panel at the Fuori Salone exhibition held in Milan, Italy through its overseas marketing agent, Verbatim, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Kagaku Media.

OLED, or organic light emitting diodes are flexible flat display panels similar in application to CCFL or LED backlit LCD panels except that OLEDs do not require any backlighting as the color-producing organic compounds on a substrate produce their own light when excited by electricity flowing between embedded electrodes. Although not as bright as LCDs, OLED panels can display a higher contrast ratio because its backlight-less design produces deeper blacks.

OLED panels are also flexible and thin and this is the chafracteristic being exploited in Mitsubishi/s VELVE panels. While mass production is scheduled for the D3 this year, sample kits are already available at about $1,000 each. The 14 cm x 14 cm square sample panel is the largest OLED panel in the market and is controlled via an included USB controller to produce seven preprogrammed colors (red, green, blue, white, yellow, magenta, cyan), four colors of white (four color temperature levels), 16 levels of dimming, and an automatic toning mode.

The panel is going to be manufactured using a new coating technique similar to printing which is expected to provide better economies of scale and hence lower pricing at higher production levels than the current vapor deposition manufacturing system used on smaller OLED screens.