Space Laser to Prove Increased Broadband Possible

"The goal of the LLCD(Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration ) experiment is to validate and build confidence in this technology so that future missions will consider using it," said Don Cornwell, LLCD manager. "This unique ability developed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory), has incredible application possibilities and we are very excited to get this instrument off the ground."
Since NASA first ventured into space, through the moon landings, shuttle program, and unmanned exploration missions, radio frequency communication also known as RF, has been the communications platform used. But RF is reaching its limit just as demand for more data capacity continues to increase. The development of laser communications will give NASA the ability to extend communication applications such as increased image resolution and even 3-D video transmission into deep space.
LLCD is NASA's first dedicated system for two-way communication using laser instead of radio waves. "LLCD is designed to send six times more data from the moon using a smaller transmitter with 25 percent less power as compared to the equivalent state-of-the-art radio (RF) system," said Cornwell. "Lasers are also more secure and less susceptible to interference and jamming."
The LLCD experiment is hosted aboard NASA's LADEE: a 100-day robotic mission designed, built, integrated, tested and will be operated by Ames. LADEE will attempt to confirm whether dust caused a mysterious glow on the lunar horizon astronauts observed during several Apollo missions and explore the moon's tenuous, exotic atmosphere. Launch of the LADEE spacecraft is set for September aboard a U.S. Air Force Minotaur V rocket, an excess ballistic missile converted into a space launch vehicle and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va.
The LADEE spacecraft will take 30 days to reach the moon because of its flight path. LLCD will begin operations shortly after arrival into lunar orbit and continue for 30 days afterward.
LLCD's main mission objective is to transmit hundreds of millions of bits of data per second from the moon to Earth. This is equivalent to transmitting more than 100 HD television channels simultaneously. LLCD receiving capability will also be tested as tens of millions of bits per second are sent from Earth to the spacecraft. These demonstrations will prove the technology for increased bandwidth for future missions is possible.
There is a primary ground terminal at NASA's White Sands Complex in New Mexico, to receive and transmit LLCD signals. The team at MIT designed, built, and tested the terminal. They also will be responsible for LLCD's operation at that site.
There are two alternate sites, one located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which is for receiving only. The other is being provided by the European Space Agency on the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the coast of Africa. It will have two-way communication capability with LLCD. "Having several sites gives us alternatives which greatly reduces the possibility of interference from clouds," said Cornwell.
LLCD is a short duration experiment and the precursor to NASA's long duration demonstration, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD). It also is a part of the agency's Technology Demonstration Missions Program, which is working to develop crosscutting technology capable of operating in the rigors of space. LCRD is scheduled to launch in 2017.
NASA engineers believe this technology becomes even more advantageous for communications beyond Earth's orbit. In the past, NASA has experimented with sending low amounts of individual pulses to cameras on far-away space probes near Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury.
Recently, an image of Leonardo da Vinci's painting, the Mona Lisa, was transmitted to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft orbiting the moon. "But this was done at only hundreds of data bits per second," said Cornwell. "LLCD will be the first dedicated optical communication system and will send data millions of times faster."
The European Space Agency already has successfully demonstrated laser communication between satellites in Earth orbit. Recently they launched Alphasat to demonstrate laser transmission between a low-earth orbit satellite and a satellite in geostationary Earth orbit. LLCD's laser link from the moon will be ten times farther away.
NASA is looking upon laser communication as the next paradigm shift in future space communication, especially deep space. "We can even envision such a laser-based system enabling a robotic mission to an asteroid," said Cornwell. "It could have 3-D, high-definition video signals transmitted to Earth providing essentially 'telepresence' to a human controller on the ground."

Butterfly Wings + Carbon Nanotubes = New 'Nanobiocomposite' Material

Eijiro Miyako and colleagues explain that Morpho butterfly wings have natural properties that are beyond the capabilities of any current technology to reproduce artificially. In addition to being lightweight, thin and flexible, the butterfly's wings absorb solar energy, shed water quickly and are self-cleaning. Miyako's group had been working with tiny cylinders of carbon termed carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and became fascinated with CNTs' unique electrical, mechanical, thermal and optical properties. Miyako's team set out to marry the wings and nanotubes to produce an all-new hybrid material.
They describe growing a honeycomb network of carbon nanotubes on Morpho butterfly wings, creating a composite material that could be activated with a laser. The resulting material heated up faster than the original components by themselves, exhibited high electrical conductivity and had the ability to copy DNA on its surface without absorbing it. "Our present study highlights the important progress that has been made toward the development of smart nanobiomaterials for various applications such as digital diagnosis, soft wearable electronic devices, photosensors, and photovoltaic cells," the scientists state.

Mini Project on DIP

10 Good Electronics Mini Projects Ideas

Mini projects are playing very important role in getting good practical knowledge on the studied concepts in engineering. Electronics mini projects not just emphasize engineering theories but aid to unlock career prospects. There are many excellent electrical and electronics engineering mini projects for career progression, strengthen and challenge your awareness. This can be helpful not only for you, but also to others. These mini projects necessitate you to concentrate on all aspects of electrical and electronics engineering.
So, we are interested in listing some of the top electronics mini projects below for engineering students which a student can choose & design for his or her hobbyist needs. These mini projects are basically for electrical and electronics engineering students from a variety of streams such as EI (Electronics and Instrumentation), ECE (Electronics and Communication) and EEE (Electrical Engineering).
To get better idea over the simple electronics projects, kindly peep into the following top 10 projects with explanation:

1. Battery Charger Circuit Bringing Into Play SCR

This is one of the most fundamental and finest mini project for any in electronics student. A SCR (Silicon Controlled Rectifier) is made use of to fix the AC mains voltage for the battery charging. The circuit comprises of crucial transistor switching techniques and the constituents used are inexpensive and are obtainable in all electric shops.

2. Water Level Alarm Circuit

This circuit is brought into play to generate an alarm bell or light, when the height of water climbs beyond a certain level. This circuit makes use of a fundamental astable multi-vibrator prepared from an IC with 555timer. A resistance checks out is located on the tip at which the alarm has to be set ON, the moment the water goes up to that level, alarm starts to ring. The amount of constituents required for this circuit is incredibly less and can be effortlessly accumulated on a PCB.

3. Street Light Circuit

his small mini project is employed to intend a street light that glows up when night drops and mechanically switch OFF with the crack of dawn. In order to sense the amount of daylight that is desired to settle on when to discontinue the circuit and afterward stimulate it. This is done with the aid of a sensor named as LDR (Light Dependent Resistor). The key theory employed at the back of the Light Dependent Resistor is that, the existence of light causes the sensor’s resistance to go low & again brighten up. You can adjust the circuit by inserting LED’s as a substitute of the 230 volt light. This street light circuit is relatively simple to intend, and additional alterations can be done as per your choice.

4. Emergency Light Mini Project

This is a Light Dependent Resistor based Emergency Light that switches on a high watt white LED when the room is dark. It can also be brought into play as a simple emergency lamp in the kid’s room to steer clear of the panic situations in the event of unexpected current failure. It provides sufficient glow in the room. The circuit of Emergency Light is simple so that it can be created in a tiny box. A 12 volt tiny battery is made use of to give power supply to the circuit. T1 and T2 are two transistors employed as electronic keys to switch ON or OFF the white LED. To know more about it, click on Automatic Emergency LED Light.

5. Low Cost Fire Alarm Circuit

This circuit is bring into play for spotting a fire and creating an alarm, therefore awaking the populace in the premises where it is incorporated. A sensor transistor named BC177 is brought use of to sense the temperature formed owing to the fire. A predetermined temperature level can be held in reserve for the transistor. The moment the temperature increases over the predetermined temperature level, the escape current of the transistor mounts, as a consequence driving other transistors in the circuit. A relay is also making use of to turn the bell load as its output. The constituents desired for the circuit can be attained effortlessly and the circuit is simple to intend.

6. Air Flow Detector Circuit

This uncomplicated mini project is brought into use to intend an indicator to demonstrate the speed of air flow in a specified room. The air flow is sensed with the aid of a luminous bulb string. The deviations causing owing to the alteration of resistance in the bulb owing to the air flow are provided to the input of an equipped amplifier (LM339). Additional amendments can be done to the circuit and a number of them are given discussed as well.

7. Telephone Operated Calling System

This telephone operated alarming or calling circuit is extremely useful for doctors in signaling the patients, in financial institutions and in a variety of other circumstances where individuals have to be signaled or called. When you require calling an individual amid many resting outside your office, just raise the telephone receiver off the structure and push the respective number. The number of the individual called will be exhibited and signals will resonance to notify the individual that is called. A commonly used receiver IC named DTMF (Dual-tone multiple-frequency) is equipped in telephone set. The electronic circuit comprise of one common Dual-tone multiple-frequency receiver named Holtek HT9170.

8. Electronic Card Lock System

The circuit existing here can be employed as a security device (Lock) for vital electronic or electrical machines. When card is popped inside the machine, depending on the situation of the hole punched on the card, a precise machine would be turned ON. The card is introduced in the machine just like an ATM card inserted inside the ATM machine slot. This card is rectangular in shape with just one hole punched on it. The electronic card circuit brings into play eight photo-transistors (T1 to T8). When no card is there in the lock, illumination from luminous lantern L1 of 40- watt & 230V drops on all the photo- transistor sensors. If a wrong attempt of inserting the card is made, then the card will not go inside machine completely and thereby the system will not be unlocked.

9. Servo Motor Controller

This is an uncomplicated fundamental design of Servo pulse producer. It brings into play an IC named CMOS 7555 in the Astable mode to produce pulses to force the servo motor. The servo motor circuit can be aptly altered to get pulses of adequate length. A servo is a tiny machine that has a productivity shaft. This productivity shaft can be located to precise angular locations by propelling the servo a coded indication. As long as the coded indication survives on the input line, the servo will uphold the angular location of the productivity shaft. The angular location of the shaft is determined by the length of a pulse that is functional to the power wire. This is also known as Pulse Coded Modulation.

10. Single Chip FM Radio Circuit

This FM Radio mini project is primarily intended for B.tech EC scholars. An IC named TDA7000 is employed for the reason. The IC is incorporated with a Frequency Locked Loop mechanism with an intermediary frequency of 70 kHz. There have been a lot of criticisms that the IC is outdated. The intermediary frequency pick ability is attained by active RC strainers. The single function which wants alliance is the echoing circuit for the oscillator, therefore picking the reaction frequency. False reception is evaded by means of a silent circuit, which also eradicates too deafening input signs. Particular steps are used to assemble the radiation necessities.

Picking a theme for mini project is extremely vital while carrying out an electronics & electrical mini project. You require picking and choosing one of the newest trends and you require making certain that the mini project has to be of good significance to someone.

There are few key factors which are observed by the teachers while evaluate your mini project.

What is the scope of your mini project?
What are the applications and how is it useful to the real world?
What is your involvement in doing that mini project?
What is the practicability of putting into practice the same in real time?
Remember all the above points in mind before choosing and deciding an electronics mini project and get succeed in completing the project.

Programmable versus nonprogrammable

ICs are preprogrammed or programmable. And that brings us to our next distinction. Although we do use ICs in many of our projects — for example, in the form of a sound chip that’s preprogrammed with beeps and music — for the most part, we keep away from programmable electronics. In order to work with programmable electronics, you have to get your hands dirty with programming code and microcontrollers, and that’s not what we’re about here. Instead, we focus on building electronics gadgets that teach you about how electricity works and get your mind stirring with ideas about what you can do by using electronics, rather than computers. Don’t get us wrong: Microcontroller projects can be a lot of fun. After you get your hands dirty and pick up lots of basic skills doing the projects in this book, you might just go out and buy Microcontroller Projects For Dummies (if such a book existed).

Up to 3% of the population are psychopaths. That's a lot of dangerous minds. What if one of them were yours?

How are movies stored on DVD discs?

Even though the storage capacity of a DVD is huge, the uncompressed video data of a full-length movie would never fit on a DVD. In order to fit a movie on a DVD, you need video compression. A group called the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) establishes the standards for compressing moving pictures.
When movies are put onto DVDs, they are encoded in MPEG-2 format and then stored on the disc. This compression format is a widely accepted international standard. Your DVD player contains an MPEG-2 decoder, which can uncompress this data as quickly as you can watch it.
A movie is usually film­ed at a rate­ of 24 frames per second. This means that every second, there are 24 complete images displayed on the movie screen. American and Japanese television uses a format called National Television Standards Committee (NTSC). NTSC displays a total of 30 frames per second; but it does this in a sequence of 60 fields, each of which contains alternating lines of the picture. Other countries use Phase Alternating Line (PAL) format, which displays at 50 fields per second, but at a higher resolution (see How Video Formatting Works for details on these formats). Because of the differences in frame rate and resolution, an MPEG movie needs to be formatted for either the NTSC or the PAL system.
The MPEG encoder that creates the compressed movie file analyzes each frame and decides how to encode it. The compression uses some of the same technology as still image compression to eliminate redundant or irrelevant data. It also uses information from other frames to reduce the overall size of the file. Each frame can be encoded in one of three ways:
As an intraframe, which contains the complete image data for that frame. This method of encoding provides the least compression.
As a predicted frame, which contains just enough information to tell the DVD player how to display the frame based on the most recently displayed intraframe or predicted frame. This means that the frame contains only the data that relates to how the picture has changed from the previous frame.
As a bidirectional frame. In order to display this type of frame, the player must have the information from the surrounding intraframe or predicted frames. Using data from the closest surrounding frames, it uses interpolation, which is sort of like averaging, to calculate the position and color of each pixel.
Depending on the type of scene being converted, the encoder will decide which types of frames to use. If a newscast were being converted, a lot more predicted frames could be used because most of the scene is unaltered from one frame to the next. On the other hand, if a very fast action scene were being converted, in which things changed very quickly from one frame to the next, more intraframes would have to be encoded. The newscast would compress to a much smaller size than the action sequence. This is why the storage capacity of digital video recorders (which store video on a hard drive using the MPEG format) can vary depending what type of show you are recording.
If all of this sounds complicated, then you are starting to get a feeling for how much work your DVD player does to decode an MPEG-2 movie. A lot of processing power is required -- even some computers with DVD players can't keep up with the processing required to play a DVD movie.

SUPER-SENSITIVE CURRENT DETECTOR

Everybody knows paper doesn’t conduct electricity. Or does it? Many materials that we consider insulators actually conduct very tiny amounts of current. Here’s a circuit that can detect current flow so small that even expensive laboratory meters can’t see it. An LED blinks if there’s any current flow at all. The faster the blinking, the more current is flowing. The smallest amounts of current most normal meters can detect will blink this circuit’s LED so fast that it will appear to be on solidly. This thing is sensitive! You’ll have fun connecting it to books, bed sheets and just about anything else you can think of that isn’t obviously conductive. The results will surprise you.

The circuit works by storing in the capacitor the tiny amount of current flowing through whatever you’re testing. The electricity gets stored like water in a cup, with the voltage rising as more is put in. When the voltage gets high enough, the chip detects it and turns on the LED, while also quickly draining the charge from the capacitor. As soon as the charge is gone, the light goes out and the process starts over again. The more current that flows through your object, the faster the capacitor charges up and the faster the light flashes.

What You’ll Need

Breadboard, Radio Shack #276WBU301

7 jumper wires made from solid hookup wire, Radio Shack #278-1222 or similar

4 clip leads

TLC555CP timer chip, Radio Shack #276-1718

100 pf (picofarad) capacitor, Radio Shack #272-123

1 MΩ (megohm, or million ohms) resistor, Radio Shack #271-1356

10 MΩ resistor, Radio Shack #271-1365

LED, Radio Shack #276-304 or similar. Any small LED will work.

Battery holder, Radio Shack #270-383

4 AA alkaline batteries

What You’ll Do

1. Turn the chip so that the dimple for pin 1 is in the lower left corner. Position it over the center of the breadboard, and press its pins into the holes until you feel it snap in.

Resistors use bands of color instead of numbers to show their values. The 1 MΩ (megohm) resistor’s bands are brown, black, green, gold. The 10 MΩ resistor’s bands are brown, black, blue, gold. They’re similar, so be careful not to confuse them. If you do, the circuit won’t work right, but you won’t hurt anything.

2. Connect the parts as shown in the drawings. When you plug in the LED, be sure the shorter lead (from the flat edge of the case) goes to pin 3 of the chip. Connect two clip leads as shown to use for connecting to whatever you want to test. It’s best not to use red and black leads for these because we’ll use those colors for the battery connections.

3. Put the batteries in their holder with their flat, negative ends going to the springs, and connect a red clip lead to the smaller terminal on top. Now connect a black clip lead to the larger terminal. Connect the leads’ other ends to the upper- and lower-most holes on the breadboard, the ones that connect from left to right, using jumper wires. The red clip goes to the top row on the board, and the black one goes to the bottom. Be certain not to get this backward, or you will probably ruin the chip.

4. The light might blink a time or two, but then it should stop. Now hook the loose ends of the test probes onto something non-metallic. Try a sheet of paper first. Take your hands off the test probes, because touching them can fool the circuit and make it blink when it shouldn’t.

Does the light blink? With most paper, it will. Even long stretches of paper conduct enough current for this circuit to detect it. Try clipping to two separate sheets of paper, and then lay one on top of the other. Use a drinking straw or the eraser end of a pencil to press one paper onto another. Just a small area of contact will blink the light because a very tiny current is flowing. Now try other household items. Stay away from electrical wiring or anything else that could be dangerous.

Troubleshooting

If the light won’t blink, you probably have an incorrect connection on the breadboard, the LED is in backward or the battery is not hooked up correctly. Disconnect one of the battery’s leads and check the wiring, and also check that you have the resistors in the right places. Then hook the battery back up. Grabbing the free ends of the test probes should turn the light on.

If the light blinks when the probes aren’t connected to anything, be sure you’re not touching them or their wires, and that their free ends aren’t touching something that could be conductive. Even a tabletop may show some current flow.

Shocking Science Facts:

A laser is a very narrow beam of powerful light. It is so
straight that it does not spread out even over huge distances.
A laser beam can be reflected off a mirror on the Moon and
return back to Earth in a straight line.

How OLEDs Work

Introduction to How OLEDs Work

Imagine having a high-definition TV that is 80 inches wide and less than a quarter-inch thick, consumes less power than most TVs on the market today and can be rolled up when you're not using it. What if you could have a "heads up" display in your car? How about a display monitor built into your clothing? These devices may be possible in the near future with the help of a technology called organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs).

OLEDs are solid-state devices composed of thin films of organic molecules that create light with the application of electricity. OLEDs can provide brighter, crisper displays on electronic devices and use less power than conventional light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or liquid crystal displays (LCDs) used today.

In this article, you will learn how­ OLED technology works, what types of OLEDs are possible, how OLEDs compare to other lighting techn­ologies and what problems OLEDs need to overcome.

Like an LED, an OLED is a solid-state semiconductor device that is 100 to 500 nanometers thick or about 200 times smaller than a human hair. OLEDs can have either two layers or three layers of organic material; in the latter design, the third layer helps transport electrons from the cathode to the emissive layer. In this article, we'll be focusing on the two-layer design.
An OLED consists of the following parts:

• Substrate (clear plastic, glass, foil) - The substrate supports the OLED.
• Anode (transparent) - The anode removes electrons (adds electron "holes") when a current flows through the device.
• Organic layers - These layers are made of organic molecules or polymers.
• Conducting layer - This layer is made of organic plastic molecules that transport "holes" from the anode. One conducting polymer used in OLEDs is polyaniline.
• Emissive layer - This layer is made of organic plastic molecules (different ones from the conducting layer) that transport electrons from the cathode; this is where light is made. One polymer used in the emissive layer is polyfluorene.
• Cathode (may or may not be transparent depending on the type of OLED) - The cathode injects electrons when a current flows through the device.
• The biggest part of manufacturing OLEDs is applying the organic layers to the substrate. This can be done in three ways:
• Vacuum deposition or vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE) - In a vacuum chamber, the organic molecules are gently heated (evaporated) and allowed to condense as thin films onto cooled substrates. This process is expensive and inefficient.
• Organic vapor phase deposition (OVPD) - In a low-pressure, hot-walled reactor chamber, a carrier gas transports evaporated organic molecules onto cooled substrates, where they condense into thin films. Using a carrier gas increases the efficiency and reduces the cost of making OLEDs.
• Inkjet printing - With inkjet technology, OLEDs are sprayed onto substrates just like inks are sprayed onto paper during printing. Inkjet technology greatly reduces the cost of OLED manufacturing and allows OLEDs to be printed onto very large films for large displays like 80-inch TV screens or electronic billboards.

How do OLEDs Emit Light?

OLEDs emit light in a similar manner to LEDs, through a process called electrophosphorescence.
The process is as follows:

1. The battery or power supply of the device containing the OLED applies a voltage across the OLED.
2. An electrical current flows from the cathode to the anode through the organic layers (an electrical current is a flow of electrons). The cathode gives electrons to the emissive layer of organic molecules. The anode removes electrons from the conductive layer of organic molecules. (This is the equivalent to giving electron holes to the conductive layer.)
3. At the boundary between the emissive and the conductive layers, electrons find electron holes. When an electron finds an electron hole, the electron fills the hole (it falls into an energy level of the atom that's missing an electron). When this happens, the electron gives up energy in the form of a photon of light (see How Light Works).
4. The OLED emits light.
5. The color of the light depends on the type of organic molecule in the emissive layer. Manufacturers place several types of organic films on the same OLED to make color displays.
6. The intensity or brightness of the light depends on the amount of electrical current applied: the more current, the brighter the light.

SMALL MOLECULE OLED VS. POLYMER OLED

The types of molecules used by Kodak scientists in 1987 in the first OLEDs were small organic molecules. Although small molecules emitted bright light, scientists had to deposit them onto the substrates in a vacuum (an expensive manufacturing process called vacuum deposition -- see previous section). Since 1990, researchers have been using large polymer molecules to emit light. Polymers can be made less expensively and in large sheets, so they are more suitable for large-screen displays.

Types of OLEDs: Passive and Active Matrix

• There are several types of OLEDs:
• Passive-matrix OLED
• Active-matrix OLED
• Transparent OLED
• Top-emitting OLED
• Foldable OLED
• White OLED

Each type has different uses. In the following sections, we'll discuss each type of OLED. Let's start with passive-matrix and active-matrix OLEDs.

                                       Passive-matrix OLED (PMOLED)

PMOLEDs have strips of cathode, organic layers and strips of anode. The anode strips are arranged perpendicular to the cathode strips. The intersections of the cathode and anode make up the pixels where light is emitted. External circuitry applies current to selected strips of anode and cathode, determining which pixels get turned on and which pixels remain off. Again, the brightness of each pixel is proportional to the amount of applied current.
PMOLEDs are easy to make, but they consume more power than other types of OLED, mainly due to the power needed for the external circuitry. PMOLEDs are most efficient for text and icons and are best suited for small screens (2- to 3-inch diagonal) such as those you find in cell phones, PDAs and MP3 players. Even with the external circuitry, passive-matrix OLEDs consume less battery power than the LCDs that currently power these devices.

Active-matrix OLED (AMOLED)

AMOLEDs have full layers of cathode, organic molecules and anode, but the anode layer overlays a thin film transistor (TFT) array that forms a matrix. The TFT array itself is the circuitry that determines which pixels get turned on to form an image.
AMOLEDs consume less power than PMOLEDs because the TFT array requires less power than external circuitry, so they are efficient for large displays. AMOLEDs also have faster refresh rates suitable for video. The best uses for AMOLEDs are computer monitors, large-screen TVs and electronic signs or billboards.

Types of OLEDs: Transparent, Top-emitting, Foldable and White

Transparent OLED

Transparent OLEDs have only transparent components (substrate, cathode and anode) and, when turned off, are up to 85 percent as transparent as their substrate. When a transparent OLED display is turned on, it allows light to pass in both directions. A transparent OLED display can be either active- or passive-matrix. This technology can be used for heads-up displays.

Top-emitting OLED

Top-emitting OLEDs have a substrate that is either opaque or reflective. They are best suited to active-matrix design. Manufacturers may use top-emitting OLED displays in smart cards.

Foldable OLED

Foldable OLEDs have substrates made of very flexible metallic foils or plastics. Foldable OLEDs are very lightweight and durable. Their use in devices such as cell phones and PDAs can reduce breakage, a major cause for return or repair. Potentially, foldable OLED displays can be attached to fabrics to create "smart" clothing, such as outdoor survival clothing with an integrated computer chip, cell phone, GPS receiver and OLED display sewn into it.

White OLED

White OLEDs emit white light that is brighter, more uniform and more energy efficient than that emitted by fluorescent lights. White OLEDs also have the true-color qualities of incandescent lighting. Because OLEDs can be made in large sheets, they can replace fluorescent lights that are currently used in homes and buildings. Their use could potentially reduce energy costs for lighting.
In the next section, we'll discuss the pros and cons of OLED technology and how it compares to regular LED and LCD technology.

OLED Advantages and Disadvantages

The LCD is currently the display of choice in small devices and is also popular in large-screen TVs. Regular LEDs often form the digits on digital clocks and other electronic devices. OLEDs offer many advantages over both LCDs and LEDs:

• The plastic, organic layers of an OLED are thinner, lighter and more flexible than the crystalline layers in an LED or LCD.
• Because the light-emitting layers of an OLED are lighter, the substrate of an OLED can be flexible instead of rigid. OLED substrates can be plastic rather than the glass used for LEDs and LCDs.
• OLEDs are brighter than LEDs. Because the organic layers of an OLED are much thinner than the corresponding inorganic crystal layers of an LED, the conductive and emissive layers of an OLED can be multi-layered. Also, LEDs and LCDs require glass for support, and glass absorbs some light. OLEDs do not require glass.
• OLEDs do not require backlighting like LCDs (see How LCDs Work). LCDs work by selectively blocking areas of the backlight to make the images that you see, while OLEDs generate light themselves. Because OLEDs do not require backlighting, they consume much less power than LCDs (most of the LCD power goes to the backlighting). This is especially important for battery-operated devices such as cell phones.
• OLEDs are easier to produce and can be made to larger sizes. Because OLEDs are essentially plastics, they can be made into large, thin sheets. It is much more difficult to grow and lay down so many liquid crystals.
• OLEDs have large fields of view, about 170 degrees. Because LCDs work by blocking light, they have an inherent viewing obstacle from certain angles. OLEDs produce their own light, so they have a much wider viewing range.

Problems with OLED

• OLED seems to be the perfect technology for all types of displays, but it also has some problems:
  • Lifetime - While red and green OLED films have longer lifetimes (46,000 to 230,000 hours), blue organics currently have much shorter lifetimes (up to around 14,000 hours[source: OLED-Info.com]).
  • Manufacturing - Manufacturing processes are expensive right now.
• Water - Water can easily damage OLEDs.

Simple Generator:

Don't get Anger

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HaPpy Friendship Day :

Quiz of the day:(QOD)

Question 1:Digital images are made of tiny dots called?

cells

electrolytes

pixels