In the second of two reports from the recent LightFair trade show, Kathryn Conway describes more lighting products that take advantage of the unique properties of LEDs.

LED products illuminate LightFair 2001 New LED products illuminated the path to the future of lighting at LightFair 2001, held May 29 to June 1 in Las Vegas. This premier lighting industry trade show attracted an international audience of more than 16 000 designers and buyers to view more than 1200 exhibit booths. HB-LEDs continue their rapid move into the world of lighting, progressing from previous years market niches such as exit signs and traffic signals toward illumination for architectural applications. As at last year s LightFair (see Compound Semiconductor July 2000, p46), LED products captured ample awards from sponsors and from the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. Emerging from emergency-only The lighting community has come to accept and expect LEDs in emergency and egress lighting applications. Most emergency egress signage exhibitors, including Lightguard and MaxLite, featured new products evenly illuminated with only a few HB-LEDs. Not surprisingly, the electricity crisis in the West seems to have prompted more manufacturers to display the US EPA/US DOE ENERGY STAR logo for qualifying LED exit sign products. Manufacturers are also offering directional signs that take advantage of the trend of increasingly high-brightness LEDs. For example, Exitronix introduced the "LC Series" of dynamic signs for traffic lane control. Using fewer LEDs but those with much higher light output than available in past, means that LED lighting products now have sleeker, more attractive shapes. For example, Targetti North America introduced the ADA-compliant Usher Seat Light to fit neatly and safely under the armrests of theater chairs, adding to its existing lines of edge and path-lighting products. Several manufacturers brought LEDs more into the mainstream of their architectural offerings. Winner of a Best Booth Award, ERCO Leuchten GmbH introduced its Orientation Luminaires to highlight passageways and to accent architectural forms, taking a Best of Show in Emergency Lighting. Their stainless steel surface and safety glass are designed for specification grade installations. Lucifer Lighting Company won Best of Show in the Landscape Lighting category for the Stealth Steplight, which has a slim profile and miniature size, also thanks to LEDs. Not all manufacturers trended smaller though. Louis Poulsen Lighting Inc, after winning a Best Booth Award (see ), promoted the merits of the Pharo LED, "the largest, brightest, in-grade LED lamp source product available," meant for faade and accent illumination. Farlight introduced the uniLED luminaire family of rugged pathmarking lights, with several beam pattern variations. The family of single-LED luminaires is designed to serve in various applications from roadways and airfields to architectural and landscape lighting. The products (see ) are completely sealed, can be driven over, and have power consumption less than 2 W, with an estimated maintenance-free life span of over ten years. Nudging out neon The next market niche likely to be conquered by LEDs is linear decorative, conventionally done with fluorescent, neon or miniature incandescent lamps. These older sources can be hazardous due to excess heat and electrical system problems, they require higher input wattage than LEDs do, and may not last as long as LEDs, thus requiring more maintenance and replacement. As more architects and facility managers become familiar with the long service life of LEDs, they will seek products that they can recommend to clients as "maintenance-free." Nowhere is this more important than in facade, landscape, and fountain lighting, where light bulb changes are inconvenient, costly and sometimes hazardous for facility personnel. Solid-state devices are especially well-suited for any application where vibration is an issue. So LEDs may well become the favorite light source of installers, lighting designers and lumin-aire manufacturers, who are the first to hear complaints and who ultimately bear the expense of call-backs and returns from customers. Playing the trend toward colorful outlines, Candylites showed eight colors of low voltage Litesicles, designed for trim and accent lighting. Their LEDs are in 3/4 inch diameter sealed acrylic tubes of various lengths that can connect end-to-end. Tokistar Lighting Inc showed its frosted LED System 180 products including LS Series Exterior-Grade Flexible Tapelight, Linear Extrusion Systems, and Flexible Lightstring with Panel Fasteners. These systems operate at 12V AC, and individual LEDs can be replaced if necessary. Color Kinetics, well-known for its LED innovations, announced its foray into the world of computer and video game players with the LED Surround Light Entertainment Systems, "a complete design/ playback system for creating immersive environments." Last (but certainly not least) Color Kinetics recently showcased its digital LED products in what is claimed to be the largest chandelier in the world, in the Hollywood Casino in Shreveport, LA. TIR Systems introduced two distinctive LED products in the Destiny Series (see ). The Vertical ColorBar can be wall-mounted indoors or outdoors for wall-washing in corporate or retail settings. The Illuminated Pole combines LEDs with high-tech light guides for decorative way-marking in plazas, parks and other landscapes, and is available in heights of 6, 8 and 10 feet. For areas where independence from the electric grid is desirable, Light Projects London featured Tsola, a product line of outdoor recessed LED indicator lights powered by integral solar panels. Prominent in announcing the names of retail stores, "channel letters" and other luminous cues are another big target for LED manufacturers. Hollow, translucent letters typically contain small fluorescent or miniature incandescent lamps, while opaque letters are outlined with neon. Numerous exhibitors showed channel letter products, including Act One Communications, LumiLeds Lighting and Osram. Modulating the market To beat the odds in the illumination world, LEDs will fare best in groups or modules. LEDs may be bright when viewed directly, but individually they are no match for the light output of even the least efficient incandescent lamp. LightFair attendees saw a dizzying variety of LEDs this year. Diversity rules: no trend is apparent as manufacturers play the numbers game with arrays ranging from a few LEDs to hundreds of LEDs, in a myriad of colors and packages, and in just as many geometric combinations. For example, Kingbright USA Corp, LEDtronics and Sun LED Corp each offered hundreds of modules. Perhaps this is life as usual in the speedy semiconductor industry, but it perplexes luminaire manufacturers in the slower-paced lighting community! Creating the winning modules the ones that will become the standard "light bulb" for the future generation of lighting fixtures is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing LED manufacturers. In the category of Specialty Lamps, LumiLeds Lighting won Best of Show for their Luxeon line of power light sources. Promising a 25 000 hour service life with less than 20% decline in light output for these sources, the Philips/Agilent joint venture has responded to the market s concerns about reliability and performance. These high-brightness sources, coupled with controllers, come in Star, Ring and Flood configurations (see Compound Semiconductor July 2001, p11). NorLux, a subsidiary of Uniroyal Technology, attracted designers by showcasing its new Hex LED package in several types of luminaires, including a polished aluminum task light (see Compound Semiconductor June 2001, p9). Mounted on a hexagonal aluminum plate, these monocolor, binary complementary and RGB sources are being marketed as easy to assemble and to position for secondary optics. OptoTechnology s Shark Series offers designers a high light output module using 50 LEDs (in any of 5 colors) die-mounted to a beryllium substrate. Osram Opto Semiconductors, a joint venture between Osram and Infineon, groups its modules into three "families" (see photo, page 75). Modules without lens systems include LINEARlight, LINEARlight Flex (TapeLED), BACKlight, and COINlight. Modules with a lens system are named EFFECTlight and modules with light guides come in three shapes as MARKERlights. All of these products are designed for use with Optotronic power supplies and simple-to-use connectors. Longing to be light bulbs The big lamp manufacturers may not yet be ready to aggressively cannibalize their established incandescent lamp lines, but many companies showed LED lamp systems that are compatible with conventional screw-base and snap-base sockets. Monochromatic LEDs dominate this niche because white LEDs are expensive, not yet bright enough to compete with traditional white sources, and they fall far short of most lighting designers expectations for color rendering and color temperature. However, the fast-growing and highly lucrative retail lighting sector needs light sources that are colorful, reliable, and energy efficient. One of the most widely used lamps for retail lighting is the MR-16: a multi-faceted reflector lamp usually incorporating a low-voltage halogen light source. Designers use the MR-16 to enhance the sparkle of retail sale items. Several manufacturers, including Bruck Lighting Systems, introduced LED MR-16 products. Boca Flasher displayed LED MR-16s, in addition to an array of standard size base LED lamps, in both bare-lamp and globe-encased options. Some Boca Flasher products can be used in dynamic displays run by the 3-color Analog Color Wash Controller. COLOR LED, marketing for two Chinese companies, offered several types of LED lamps with screw bases for both indoor and outdoor applications.