Project Overview > Brief OLED history A new era of technology is emerging in the lighting market. It is being propelled by the dramatic improvements in performance of solid state light sources. Solid state lighting is a fascinating research field which brought up the revolutionary breakthrough technology of inorganic LEDs during the last decade. These are now migrating into the general lighting field. A new development route is already identified with organic light emitting device in large area and nm-thin architectures being complementary to inorganic point sources. These sources offer completely new solutions in terms of design aspects not achievable with existing light sources. At the same time, their out-standing characteristics continue to improve and are expected to eclipse those of the most common light sources within a near future. The CombOLED project will accelerate the progress of this emerging technology through investment in the research and development necessary to overcome the technical barriers that currently limit the product to niche market. The history linked to this new technology start approximately in 1950 when Bernanose and co-workers first produced electroluminescence in organic materials by applying a high-voltage alternating current (AC) field to thin films of special organic materials. But the low electrical conductivity of such materials limited light output until more conductive organic materials became available. In the late 1970s three researchers published a groundbreaking paper on the discovery that certain classes of plastics were capable of being modified to enable them to function well conducting materials. OLED technology was firstly developed in 1987 at Eastman Kodak Company by Tang and Van Slyke using small-molecule (sm-OLED). In 1990 Richard Friend, Jeremy Burroughes and Donal Bradley discovered electroluminescence capabilities from conjugated polymers so laying down the foundations for a new generation of flat panel displays. So groundbreaking and significant was the discovery that in 2000 the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to Alan Heeger (Professor of Physics, University of California), Alan MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa for their pioneering work on conductive polymers. These technological breakthroughs  have established, during the last 20 years, the bases for creating a completely new industry based on the semi conducting properties of organic materials. 'Plastics' that are capable of exhibiting almost similar electrical properties to silicon semiconductors have opened up the possibility of creating a range of electronic devices that have the characteristics of being thin, smart, flexible, low cost and eventually completely disposable.