Green LEDs no longer holding back high-power LED projectors?

Producing green LEDs with enough “poop” (output for all you engineering-types ) to allow their use in high-powered projection systems has been a real drag. A company called Goldeneye thinks they have come up with the solution with their patented “light recycling” technology which they claim can produce over an RGB white output over 430 lumens per square-millimeter. That is quite a bit of light from an RGB HP LED module and Goldenye claims it’s an industry record. I don’t doubt it.

Kudos to goldeneye! Very kewl! 8)

Click here to read the article from LEDs Magazine

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Cree to Obsolete The Light Bulb?

Hmmmm….could be. Cree just announced they have achieved 1000+ lumens from a single-die XLamp LED driven at 4 Amps yielding a luminous efficacy of 72 lumens/watt which is about the same output level of a standard fluorescent lamp. Wowza! That is a lot of light but at the same time, that is a lot of current when you consider that most of today, commercially released high-power LEDs are driven at about 350 mA. I would really like to see the cooling that was employed. I’m thinking cryogenic perhaps or BHF’s (Big Honking Fans) maybe? How long did the XLamp last before it ruptured the space-time continuum and disappeared or melted into a pool of molten semiconductor?

Anyrate, the disclosure is very positive news for Cree and the LED industry at large. It’s only a matter of time now before LEDs are the defacto-standard in home lighting.

Click here to read the entire story

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Osram supplies LEDs for street lights, unveils new Golden Dragon

Osram just released a new Golden Dragon LED with oval-shaped lenses with 20 or 40 degree viewing angles specifically for roadway illumination. Head over to my Architectural Lighting Blog to get the rest of the story. Hopefully I’m not dating myself with the Lucky Charms joke I posted. Let me know.

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OSRAM Shows Their Colors Shattering Brightness Records

OSRAM Sets a New World Record in the Laboratory
Here’s some buzz from the OSRAM corner. They haven’t been making as much noise lately (they did announce they would be dropping OLED passive matrix displays but thats about it) as some of the other big guys in the industry but never count these guys out. Here they are breaking world records and all. The article does fail to mention that they also set the bar for green LEDs at over 100 lumens at a 350 milliamp power consumption for an efficacy of about 72 lumens/watt. You can expect to start seeing this technology in OSRAM’s Dragon and Ostar LEDS around mid-next year with samples going out late this year or early next. The green LEDs will find use in backlighting applications and the red LEDs in projection applications.

Now that’s bright baby! 8)

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Audi First to Bat with All-LED Headlights

LED Headlights Making Their Way Into The Audi R8
It was only a matter of time that LEDs make their way to the headlights of a car since they have been used as break or marker lights for a while but I do have a few questions after reading this article:

I wonder what the energy consumption of the active “electric ventilators” (i.e. fans) is? Is their consumption factored into the “50 watts” for the dipped beam headlights? On individual LED failure, does the entire headlight “module” have to be replaced? Lets face it, anyone in the industry knows that LEDs are more costly than lamps so I can only assume that the cost for one of these Audi LED headlights is gargantuan. I do agree with the lower voltage requirements statement and the LEDs are more efficient than the halogens or xenon lamps. I am not sure what is meant by “non-wearing design”? Does that mean these things don’t fail? Because that just isn’t true. High-power LEDs (1/2 watt and up) typically have a life-cycle of 10,000 hours down to 2,000 and perhaps even less for the super high-power LEDs (5 watts). Perhaps they mean that LEDs are less prone to failure due to the stresses from driving? That would be a fairly accurate statement although I hope they chose some fairly sturdy, brushless, ball-bearing fans that are dust sealed as I know these things are prone to failure due to vibration and shock.

It will be neat to see where and how the LED headlights show up and how they have progressed from here and where they go after their introduction. Of course, I’ll have to wait until they make their way into econo-cars before I can try them out unless Audi would be so kind as to ship my a test R8?…..Didn’t think so.

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Cree, Inc. Revenue Drops for Fiscal 2007

Cree’s Many Accomplishments Belie its Financial Results for Fiscal 2007

August 8, 2007…Compound semiconductor and solid state lighting innovator, Cree Inc. of Durham, North Carolina USA, reported its financial results for fiscal 2007. The yearly revenue for fiscal 2007 decreased 7 percent compared to the revenue for fiscal 2006 dropping from $423 million for fiscal 2006 to $394.1 million for fiscal 2007. The GAAP net income for fiscal 2007, $57.3 million was also down compared to $76.7 million during fiscal 2006.

During the fiscal year the company completed the acquisition of Cotco, a supplier of high brightness packaged LEDs based in China. The company made available XLamp LEDs with a minimum luminous flux of 100 lumens at 350 mA. Additionally, both the city of Raleigh, North Carolina USA, and Toronto Canada became the first and second cities to join the company’s “LED City” program.

“Fiscal 2007 was a challenging but successful year for Cree as we made great strides in our transformation from an LED chip and SiC materials technology company into a components company positioned to lead the LED lighting revolution,” stated Chuck Swoboda, Cree chairman and CEO. “…We believe the combination of growing XLamp® LED sales, our new high-brightness, packaged LED product line and a more stable LED chip business has put Cree in a strong position for growth in fiscal 2008.” Company Financial Results for Fiscal 2007

Article courtesy of the LIGHTimes

I somehow get the feeling that Cree doesn’t have to worry too much. Cree is one of, if not THE industry leader and is certainly one of the LED technology companies to beat. Currently, they are in the driver’s seat in the industry. They are the leading sponsor of theSolid-State Lighting ASSIST research program at the Lighting Research Center at RPI (see article below), they are driving the LED city program, they are pushing on Lumileds in the high-power LED module market and with their acquisition of Cotco, now have a 100 lumen, 350 mA LED. Thats hot! 8)

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Lumileds flips chip design – A bright idea?

Lumileds introduces thin-film flip chips to boost LED brightness
Yet another chip design from Lumileds. What is that now, three or four package changes over the last year or two? Thats gotta make it tough for their OEMs, that along with their recent drop in price point from the stratospheric down to something a bit more reasonable has, I have heard from an insider, the OEMs fuming and some jumping ship to find alternative sources (i.e. Cree, Inc.). Will be interesting to see where this one goes. I’m not knocking Lumileds, just reporting the buzz I have heard from the industry. Neat technology though!

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How high can LEDs fly?

My very first introduction to high-power LEDs, usually surface mount LEDs with a power consumption of a half-watt or more, was quite illuminating (pardon the pun). I was shopping for Christmas presents for the family in one of the larger retailers and stumbled into their flashlight aisle. All the familiar types were there, huge 6-volt lanterns, aluminum billy club like tactical flashlights that take like 12 D-batteries, and then I saw something unusual. It was very small compared to the rest, only about as long a typical pen and about a half-inch round. The packaging indicated it was a super-bright white LED flashlight. Even though I worked for a company that sells technical lamps and LEDs I had never seen an LED flashlight before.