Cree reports lab development of 86-lumen LEDs
Cree Lighting claims that, in a laboratory development, its XLamp 7090 LEDs have demonstrated a maximum luminous flux of 86 lumens and an efficacy of 70 lumens per watt at 350 mA.
Cree says this represents a 43 percent increase in brightness compared with the maximum luminous flux of its white XLamp 7090 power LEDs currently in production. This suggests a maximum rating of 60 lumens for production XLamp 7090s, although the datasheet on Cree s website quotes a typical value of 45 lumen.
Steve Johnson, head of the Lighting Research Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said that the result indicates that the LED industry is at least two years closer than previously predicted to achieving the "holy grail" of 150 lumens per watt.
"Cree s [development] means the LED industry is advancing brightness at a far greater pace than anticipated, which is great news for the lighting world," said Johnson.
Norbert Hiller, Cree Lighting vice president and general manager, said that Cree is focused on rapidly advancing LED performance to accelerate the adoption of the LED as a cost-effective replacement for traditional lighting in all general illumination applications.
"Today s announcement is significant because we achieved these results with our standard XLamp package," said Hiller, "Which indicates that power LEDs are rapidly moving up the performance curve similar to advances we continue to make with small LED chips."
Cree s latest results incorporate technology that was in part developed with support provided by the US Department of Energy, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and by the US Department of Commerce through the National Institute of Standards and Technology s Advanced Technology Program.
Author
Tim Whitaker is the Editor of LEDs Magazine.
