Lightimes Online News and Resources for the LED and Solid State Lighting Industry and its Supply Chain

October 11, 2007...When one watches a core technology make steady improvements in performance and quality, as the high brightness LEDs used in solid state lighting are doing, it can be easy to fall into a somewhat subconscious assumption that the majority of the invention has been done and now it's simply about process or design tweaks. Then along comes someone like Luminus Devices and their "PhlatLight" RGB solutions, and you realize that with such a different approach making its market impact, maybe the biggest innovations haven't even happened yet.

Luminus has remained on our radar scope since nearly Day 1 when our industry friend, Dr. Bob Karlicek, joined the team. Bob is a member of the "Ask Dr. Bob" triumvirate that provided commentary contributions from time to time in the earlier days of the LIGHTimes LED supply chain news, as well as serving as one of the lead instructors in the original GaN 101 workshop series before the turn of the century. (Funny how that used to mean "the 1890s", which coincidentally was around the same era that the marketplace first heard the prediction that volume production of bulk GaN wafers was probably 18-24 months out... but I diverge.) Dr. Bob K was joined in that "Ask Dr. Bob" series by Dr. Bob Steele of Strategies Unlimited fame, and Dr. Bob Walker most recently having concluded his tenure with BridgeLux and taking a bit of breather while he expands the influence his SSL consulting company YEBY Associates. As a side note, Dr. Walker will once again be joining us as a co-chair, and Dr. Steele as a keynote market speaker, for Blue 2008: Materials, Equipment & Devices Driving the LED Revolution, being held next May 7-8 in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Luminus' PhlatLight caught my eye this week in a two-pronged random attack. The first was a news item that they had brought in David Sciabica as their new director of sales for the company's general illumination business, which signaled the announcement of its plans to enter the solid state lighting. The second blip was an advertisement in AOPA's Pilot magazine in which Sandel Avionics was touting one of its newest digital display instruments as providing unmatched readability and viewing angles due to it's 200 pixel-per-inch resolution that was made possible by PhlatLight LED technology. Considering a normal computer's LCD flat-panel display is set at 72 pixels-per-inch, that's a seriously crisp display. The exciting part was that Luminus' particular technology was perceived as a critical enabler, and promoted as such to Sandel's consumer base. That would seem to be exactly what we're after in the broad market areas that LEDs touch. Kind of an "it's here, because LEDs Inside made it happen…" type of perception.

That then begs the question of what Luminus' technology is going to bring to the general illumination marketplace. One quick answer is "a lot of lumens". Their current big gun is an RGB combination that provides 3000 white lumens at 8000K color temperature under continuous operation (2000 lumens in pulsed operation). When you can replace a stack of current power LEDs with a single 4.6 x 2.6mm emitting area The current product offerings are targeted at the projector and projection TV markets where lm/watt efficiency is not the key factor (the incandescent incumbent is about 10 lm/watt). Nonetheless, those would appear to be a pretty good classroom as they demand a broad color gamut and lots of control capabilities all constrained by a fairly intense cost competitiveness. Getting those right, as they have so far, would suggest they'll be well equipped to ride the leading edge of the general illumination adoption wave.

What does that mean for the technology? Well, if one company, with one specific innovation can enable new applications and fairly well dominate a single new market area, in this case super-high resolution displays and the projection TV markets respectively, it seems fair to assume we're only one innovation away from similar feats in other markets.

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Nichia Adds Second Patent Lawsuit Against Seoul Semiconductor in KoreaLIGHTimes Staff

Liquid Fiber Displays Demonstrates 4-inch Stackable Modules That User 90 Percent Fewer LEDsLIGHTimes Staff

Osram Nominated for German Future Prize for OstarSSLDesign News Staff

Luminus Hires Sales Director for Solid State Lighting to Target General Lighting MarketLIGHTimes Staff

Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions Supports Solar Decathlon for Energy Awareness MonthLIGHTimes Staff

Muji Torches to Utilize Cree XLampsLIGHTimes Staff