Organic light emitting diodes (OLED) has long promised to bring low energy, soft, and flexible lighting to our homes and work places but costs have been a major obstacle. Aerelight is a desk lamp which fuses in-house developed organic light emitting diode technology with a ground up design to express the viability of the technology for a mainstream market. The lamp feature an ergonomic touch control interface, wireless phone charging, and thin OLED light panel.

The carefully integrated user interfaces respond to touch like common smart phones. The aluminum frame is touch sensitive to fully adjust the luminosity. Since the light’s surface is not much warmer than human skin it does not create a hotspot and is tacitly gentile. The dimming interface is still being field tested to determine the most usable configuration. The lamp base has an integrated Qi wireless phone charger tucked under a hardwood surface. Because the low heat light source needs no other light distribution infrastructure it has a very thin profile. These characteristics are a marked difference for approaching lighting design compared to LEDs which need extra layers of elements to cool the point source light and evenly distribute it.

The lamp is built around the OLED panel to demonstrate the technology being developed at OTI Lumionics, a group formed by engineering students at the University of Toronto. Their research has developed a low cost electrode surface which they have built a manufacturing process around. OLEDs are a thin sheet with a carbon dye sandwiched between a cathode and anode layer. When energized the dye glows as current passes through it. The technology has applications in almost any environment that requires illumination.

The lamp light output in measured at a lux of 1000 at 7 watts at full brightness with a color of 2900K. The light currently comes in three color choices. Production is targeted for early 2015 and Aerelight is taking preorders for $239.

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