ABSTRACT
As demonstrated throughout this volume, over the last decade tremendous strides have been made in the science and technology of organic electroluminescence. Most of this progress has been fueled by interest in developing flat panel displays based on the technology. If this rate of progress can be sustained into the next decade, organic electroluminescence technology has the potential to exert an impact not only on displays, but also on general lighting applications. In particular, a large-area white-light-producing organic light-emitting device (OLED) could potentially provide a solid state diffuse light source that could compete with conventional lighting technologies in performance and cost. In this chapter, we briefly discuss the solid state lighting vision and then describe the goals, challenges, and recent progress in developing OLEDs for general illumination.
