The broader impact/commercial potential of this small business innovative research (SBIR) Phase I Project is the further commercialization of the highly efficient and unique technology organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). This panel technology has the potential to strongly impact the automotive industry by replacing the current tail light technology. The benefits offered by OLED taillights include low cost manufacturing, space and weight saving, reduction in material consumption, energy efficiency, and freedom of form factors for design. The broader impacts of this technology coming to the commercial market are, reduced environment impact in the automotive industry and the furthering of OLED panel technology. This innovation offers a future potential to be used in residential general-purpose lighting. The demonstration and adoption of this technology in the lighting market can lead to a large national or global reduction in energy demand. This Small Business innovation research (SBIR) Phase I Project contains intellectual merit across chemistry, materials science, optics, semiconductor physics, and device engineering. In their initial phases traditional light emitting diodes (LEDs) were very efficient and converting energy into light, but it was a very difficult task to extract the light from the device for illumination. Once this problem was solved LEDs took on the well-known dome shape and immediately gained commercial traction. Currently organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) suffer a similar issue. OLEDs are very efficient at converting energy into light; however, much of the light is trapped within the device and is unable to be used for illumination. The research targets this issue with microcavity structures in hopes of creating a solution to OLEDs, allowing them to become widely available in the commercial market.
