GE Scientist's Pliable Light-Producing Sheets May Outshine Bulb
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt challenged GE engineers and scientists to strive for breakthrough ideas. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
General Electric Co. scientist Anil Duggal is working on light-producing sheets that may soon outshine the bulb.
The light bulb, once a symbol of GE’s ingenuity, has shrunk to such a small percentage of its sales, about 1 percent, that the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company tried, unsuccessfully, to sell off the business in 2008. As it turns out, GE has been directing a research effort at making the screw-in bulb obsolete, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its June 28 issue.
Duggal, a physical chemist at GE’s research laboratories in upstate New York, says he may be about a year away from producing durable and green lighting that is neither incandescent nor fluorescent.
The technology is called organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, -- not to be confused with LEDs, a different technology. GE’s OLEDs will come in rolls of flexible sheets less than a tenth of an inch (2.5 centimeter) thick, and Duggal says their energy efficiency now matches compact fluorescents, with room for improvement. Their pliability opens the door to light- producing furniture, wallpaper, or ceiling paper, and items that have yet to be imagined, Duggal says.
Like GE co-founder Thomas Edison, who improved Humphry Davy’s light bulb, Duggal is taking OLEDs, which have existed for decades, and focusing on how to mass-produce them. OLEDs glow when electricity flows through naturally occurring organic polymers. GE is betting on a process that “prints” the polymers onto plastic film and sandwiches them with a top layer of film. The long sheets can be made at high speed, producing rolls of OLEDs.
$1 Million Grant
First, Duggal needed funding. The idea of manufacturing lighting with a method akin to newspaper printing was a tough sell. In the late 1990s, he managed to buttonhole U.S. Energy Department officials visiting GE to look in on other projects. The $1 million grant that resulted helped keep the project going. In 2001, Jeff Immelt, still new in the role of chief executive officer, challenged GE engineers and scientists to strive for breakthrough ideas. Today, OLED and LED get about half of research and development’s budget for lighting at GE.
The lighting sales of market leaders Siemens AG, Royal Philips Electronics NV and GE now add up to $17 billion a year. Research firm Frost & Sullivan estimates the market for OLED lighting, which is even and diffuse compared with single-point sources such as bulbs, at $77 million annually. That could rise rapidly if architects and developers adopt the technology, says Abhigyan Sengupta, a Frost & Sullivan analyst. All GE’s major rivals are working on OLEDs, but Duggal’s manufacturing process and his flexible product may prove to be a huge advantage for GE, Sengupta says.
Duggal, 44, says he was torn between philosophy, religion, and the physical sciences as a student. His drive to solve tangible problems won out.
“My personal dream was to change the world with something that I did -- to do something new that makes a difference technology-wise,” Duggal says.
Before that happens, GE, Duggal and the outside designers who will be given the light-producing sheets must figure out how to turn this new material into products on store shelves.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rachel Layne in Boston at rlayne@bloomberg.net
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