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Cree Breaks 200 Lumen Per Watt Barrier
LIGHTimes News Staff
February 4, 2010...Cree, an innovator in LED lighting, claims to have broken the 200 lumen per Watt barrier. The company of Durham, North Carolina announced that its white, power LED achieved a record of 208 lumens per Watt at a drive current of 350mA under standard LED test conditions. The LED had a correlated color temperature of 4579 K.
Cree noted in a news release that this R&D result passes a significant milestone within the solid-state lighting industry. Cree says that while this level of performance is not yet available in Cree’s production LEDs, it continues to lead the industry with the broadest family of high-performance LEDs.
“We have now broken the elusive 200-lumen-per-watt efficacy barrier for a single white power LED,” said John Edmond, Cree co-founder and director of advanced optoelectronics. “This is a result of improvements in blue optical output power, lower operating voltage and higher conversion efficiency. We continue to push the envelope in white LED technology to enable the highest efficiency white lighting products in the marketplace.”
Cree News Release
Underwriters Laboratories Acquires Luminaire Testing Laboratory
LIGHTimes News Staff
February 4, 2010...Underwriters Laboratories, an independent product safety certification organization based in Northbrook, Illinois, reports that it has acquired Luminaire Testing Laboratory (LTL), based in Allentown, Pennsylvania USA. LTL is also an independent testing laboratory. It provides performance testing of lamps and luminaires and is one of five laboratories approved by the Department of Energy (DOE) for Energy Star qualification testing for LED lighting products. UL indicates that the acquisition bolsters its leadership in the lighting industry.
UL points out that LTL has been providing energy efficiency testing for lighting products for 20 years. LTL reportedly also provides performance testing services to the lighting industry for both lamps and luminaires. LTL also helped develop photometric testing standards including IES-LM79, the primary standard used for Energy Star qualification of LED lighting products.
UL has been evaluating lighting products even longer, since 1929. UL specifically has 20 years of experience with LED lighting products. UL contends that the acquisition further strengthens its market leadership and gives it the ability to offer bundled safety and performance testing capabilities to the lighting industry. LTL will reportedly become part of UL's Verification Services business.
"LED technology and energy efficiency are transforming the lighting industry, with the market for LED products estimated to grow significantly over the next 15 years," said Keith Williams, UL's President and CEO. "With the acquisition of LTL we continue to advance public safety worldwide and are well positioned to meet the growing market demands for third party testing for performance and energy efficiency of LED products."
"We are pleased to be aligned with the global brand of Underwriters Laboratories," said Michael Grather, CEO of Luminaire Testing Laboratory (LTL). "We are thrilled to be able to build on UL's current leadership with our expertise in lighting performance testing."
Underwriters Laboratory News Release
Cyberlux Files for Patents Related to New OEM Products
LIGHTimes News Staff
February 4, 2010...Cyberlux Corporation of Research Triangle, North Carolina USA, a provider of LED lighting solutions, reports that the company has recently filed for patent protection for four new products developed for its new OEM customers. The Cyberlux OEM clientele have received orders and contracts from both governmental agencies, as well as large, multi-national retailers for the products designed by Cyberlux.
Encompassed in two new patent filings, the Cyberlux Portable Shelter Lighting (PSL) and Enclosed Shelter Lighting (ESL) systems boast energy efficient white and red LED lighting available in a fixed or portable lighting solution for enclosed spaces. According to Cyberlux, the PSL and ESL systems are designed to provide ideal light dispersion and illumination for the portable shelter and “command and control” environments. Cyberlux says it engineered the PSL and ESL system configurations to flexibly illuminate environments of any size and scale, all powered by either AC or DC power, including DC solar power.
Cyberlux News Release
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Cree Offers New 24-Die XLamp MPL Easy White LED
LIGHTimes News Staff
February 2, 2010...Cree has introduced an LED package that delivers up to 1500 lumens at 75 lumens per Watt.
Cree claims that its new lighting-class LED can make energy inefficient light bulbs obsolete.
The XLamp MPL EasyWhite takes advantage of the company's previously announced EasyWhite binning which essentially mixes a variety of chips in a 7 MacAdam range in a single bin in order to average the color to a narrower 4 MacAdam range. The MLP EasyWhite encapsulates 24 die together. The XLamp MPL EasyWhite LED features up to 1500 lumens at 250 mA and has a compact 12-mm x 13-mm footprint, which the company says is 72 percent smaller than the nearest-competing LED component.
The multi-chip XLamp MPL EasyWhite LED is reportedly optimized for directional lighting applications, including PAR- or BR-style light bulbs. Cree boasts that with the proper system design, the MPL EasyWhite LED can deliver the required light output for a 3000-K, 75-Watt equivalent BR-30 light bulb, but would consume 78-percent less energy than traditional incandescent technology.
Cree News Release,
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Philips Lumileds Implements Full Traceability for its Power LEDs
LIGHTimes News Staff
February 2, 2010...Philips Lumileds, a pioneer in manufacturing LEDs, has reportedly added wafer-level barcodes to make Luxeon Power LEDs traceable both forwards and backwards. The company says that with the new barcodes, it is now possible to identify to the wafer level exactly when, where, and how each of the hundreds of millions of Luxeon LEDs was manufactured. Philips Lumileds uses 2D barcode technology to uniquely identify and track through the manufacturing process. Philips Lumileds is the first LED manufacturer to adopt and implement this precision manufacturing control system.
The company notes that for customers especially those in the automotive and consumer electronics industries, this level of traceability is highly desired and often required of suppliers. Philips Lumileds expects that as the LED-based lighting solution market grows, the lighting industry will also look to LED manufacturers and other system component providers to offer this level of manufacturing control. Philips Lumileds News Release
Forepi Orders Ten Additional Aixtron MOCVD Tools for Blue LED Production
CompoundSemi News Staff
February 2, 2010... Formosa Epitaxy of Lung-Tan, Taoyuan, Taiwan, placed an order for multiple MOCVD reactors from Aixtron AG. According to Formosa Epitaxy (Forepi), the new Aixtron MOCVD reactors will be used for the production of ultra-high brightness (UHB) InGaN-based blue LEDs.
Forepi's MOCVD tool order is comprised of Crius Close Coupled Showerhead systems and AIX 2800G4 HT Planetary Reactor systems. Aixtron indicated that the systems will be shipped during 2010 and will be installed alongside Forepi’s numerous high throughput Aixtron MOCVD systems.
Forepi President Frank Chien, commented, “The reasons for our latest purchase come down to the simple need to add more capacity with high yield equipment as Forepi ramps up again to meet booming market demand. In addition, we will appreciate various special features of the systems on order. For example, we are considering 4” capability for all new systems. All purchased tools are 4” production capable and will give us a rapid, straightforward route to begin offering 4” wafer preparation.”
Forepi, a veteran of the industry in its second decade of commercial operation, offers a range of products including high power InGaN blue, green, and near-UV LEDs.
Aixtron News Release
Lextar to Start LED Subsidiary in China
February 2, 2010...LED epitaxial wafer maker, Lextar Electronics, an AU Optronics subsidiary based in Taiwan, plans to invest US$20 million to set a subsidiary of its own in Suzhou, eastern China, according to an announcement by Lextar and a Digitimes article. The article indicated that Lextar's new subsidiary will initially focus on LED packaging, with operations expected to begin in H1 of 2011. The Lextar said its subsidiary may extend to MOCVD production of LED epitaxial wafers later. Lextar's board of directors has reportedly set the date for the company to merge with LightHouse Technology on March 15. The new entity will have paid-in capital of NT$3 billion (US$93.64 million). After the merger, Lextar plans to apply for listing on the emerging stock market. Lextar reportedly added 19 MOCVD machines towards the end of 2009 as a result of the boom in LED TV sales.
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The Challenge of the 'Tween' LED Lights
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
February 2, 2010...Kermit the Frog's famous one-liner was, "It isn't easy being green..." inspires us to suggest that, "It isn't easy being tween" here in the solid state lighting world. By 'tween' we mean sitting in the nether-world of purpose-built lighting that is conveniently enabled by LED lighting. A big opportunity for the LED lighting world is to put light, or particular kinds of light, in places and form factors where it didn't work (easily or cost-effectively) before. Examples could include the world of color changing, as well as "flat" lights, glowing panels, multi-directional and semi-omnidirectional bulbs and luminaires.
Color changing, and even fixed color RGB sources, are very understandable in what they do and why they work well. If you can generate a 'native' light color, instead of filtering a wider spectrum source, you'd expect to get a lot more efficient solution. Present a source with a full or nearly full spectrum (think halogen or metal-halide) and then throw a blue colored lens in front of it, and I've been told that you're effectively disposing of 90% of the lumens that you started with. Feed a current to a blue LED, and you get 100% blue photons from start to finish, and at efficiencies that are as good or better than the full spectrum source was for generating all its light. It's a no-brainer to understand why Hollywood, theater and entertainment lighting leaped onto LED-based sources from early on. We all know red-green-blue generates what our eyes perceive as "white" since true white is simply a real healthy mix of the full spectrum. The funny thing is that an RGB solution is still a little "peaky", and while our eyes appreciate the rich color it returns, the instruments do not. That shows up as a penalty when you compare RGB-generated white-lumens to incandescent, or in the case of fluorescents, phosphor-generated lumens. This isn't about the "CRI" thing (an important ongoing discussion on its own), but about the "white energy" in my layman's terms.
A good example of this comes to mind in the projector applications. About a year and half ago, we reported on our subjective experience with a Samsung pocket-projector powered by one of Luminus Devices PhlatLight LEDs. In case you're not familiar with it, the Luminus chips are around half a business card sized monsters that contain big red, green and blue LED die that are about a quarter of an inch square. They scale up and down from there, and also have phosphor converted white solutions as well, but the RGB family made it's mark in the DLP television wave as the source that provided much richer colors, and a 50,000 to 100,000 hour life, instead of the optimistic 5000 that your standard metal-halide through a color wheel solution did. What my eyes saw from this 200-ish lumen RGB LED projector was overall brightness perception that came a good way towards matching our 2000 lumen conference projector. When it came to color quality, there was no contest at all. The movie on the LED projector didn't have that washed out color look, and it just 'felt' better. Mark McClear of Cree, in a talk at last summer's DOE meet in Chicago, posed the question, "Why can't the standards acknowledge what we see with our eyes?" Namely that LED light can provide a higher quality that currently isn't reflected in the numbers.
There are other interesting "tweens" that we're having to come to grips with now. Most recently, we've seen several new Edison-based A-lamp designs hit the market. When we think A-lamp, we picture our very familiar 60, 75 or 100w incandescents, with the visible addition of the heat sink there between the base and 'globe' in the designs of most LED challengers. With the virtual completion of the DOE-generated "Integral LED Lamp" Energy Star specification, there is finally a reference point on what a "replacement" for a number of standard incandescent Edison-based bulbs should do. The spec is pretty comprehensive, and places the emphasis in the right places. For PAR/R replacements, generally recognized as the easiest 'replacement bulb' challenge for LEDs to tackle, the standards are about smoothness in the distribution, the width of the beam angle, and the brightness (center beam candle power) on the target. The MR specs follow the same approach, and since you can measure those characteristics for the 'average' incandescent solution, the bar was set to meet the distribution and output, and do it at X number of lumens per watt or better. PAR/R/MR lamps need to beat 40-45 lm/watt (the lower number for the smaller lamps), decorative/candelabra base need to beat 40 lm/watt, and A-lamps need to beat 50 lm/watt for less 10w of LED power, or 55 lm/watt for those greater than 10w. (You can see PDF slide copies of the presentation that Marc Ledbetter of the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory gave at the January 2010 LA SSL Summit here).
Then there's the tweens. They have the same efficacy requirements as the A-lamps, but drop the requirement for a particular distribution which allows things like A-lamp shaped directional lamps, as a very specific 'for instance'. Why would you want one of those? For one big reason, to replace standard incandescent A-lamps, and CFLs in the zillions of pendants and cans that they have found themselves in. Would R's work as well? Seems like they would, but for whatever reason, whether for looks or cost, or because the fixture had an attractive way to leak some of the light out in other directions, omnidirectional lamps are in there, and mostly being asked to send light in one direction. What an ideal fit for LEDs, since they really do like to send light out directionally, and those sockets are being served by 10-40lm/watt omnidirectional solutions right now (I'm guessing the light loss is likely on the order of 25-50%, so consider the range to be 5-30lm/watt out of the fixture). Here's the part that's not easy when being tween... describing it.
Humans seem to have gotten really used to the whole "Watt" thing, and the Energy Star specs acknowledge that by setting guidelines for what you can claim as an equivalent to incandescents of different wattages. And they have clearly set them with the intention that a consumer is not disappointed by the amount of brightness that they observe from the equivalent. Challenge number one comes in the form of potentially more perceived brightness coming from the higher quality LED solutions. There's already anecdotal evidence of people needing to "step down" in what they thought would be an equivalent in order to get the same overall impression of light and color. Challenge number two comes when you're a tween, such as the A-lamp form factor that is tailored to downlights. Or similarly, the one that will result from "a bulb really optimized for use in a table lamp" as Marc Ledbetter put it. (That would be one which cast the majority of its light downward towards the floor or book reader, with correct doses of side lighting to illuminate the shade and up lighting to give a nice ambiance to the room... in other words, "smart design"). But how do you describe the equivalence. If you say, "equivalent to a 75w incandescent in downlight applications" you an expect a knock at the door from the Energy Star police (not yet elevated to czar status) because you don't have a PAR/R or A-omnidirectional type of distribution. "Don't make the comparisons if you're 'other'," says the spec. Oh my. Do you not worry about being Energy Star, or not make the comparison? Tough choice. As an industry, let's keep giving it deep thought for ways to both draw the comparisons, as well as educate the coming masses that it's not about the watts anymore. Lumens and efficacy... lumens and efficacy... lumens and efficacy. Once we get that, hopefully we'll be ready to re-flash their programming to cover the whole "perceived brightness" thing. (Sigh).
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