In brief: Cree, Firecomms and Bell Labs
Cree claims record 160 lm white LED
North Carolina LED manufacturer Cree says that it has set a new benchmark for brightness and efficacy with its new white XLamp power devices.
Ready for mass production and available in volume quantities, the new XLamps produce up to 85 lumens per watt when operating at 350 mA.
Cree quotes a more typical luminous flux of 80 lumens for 350 mA operation, yielding an efficacy of 70 lumens per watt.
At the higher current of 700 mA, the maximum output is rated at 160 lumens.
The new XLamp7090 white emitters are the first to be based on Cree's large-scale EZBright 1000 chips, and their high efficiency is said to put them on a par with fluorescent sources.
"We have established a new class of LED performance," said Mike Dunn, VP of Cree's lighting and backlighting division.
Firecomms inks broadband deal
Resonant-cavity LEDs developed by the Irish firm Firecomms are to be deployed in commercial broadband links based on plastic optical fiber (POF).
Broadband equipment vendor Netopia has selected Firecomms' 650 nm devices and high-sensitivity receivers for the POF port of its new MiAVo VDSL2 service provider gateway.
It means that the devices will be used in high-speed home, office and industrial networks, where they will deliver 100 Mb/s links over a 100 m distance.
POF networks are already popular in cars, where traditional glass fibers are unsuited to the hostile automotive environment. Now, they are gaining market traction in home networks and point-to-point interconnections.
Bell's Ng scoops two awards
GaN investigator Hock Ng from Bell Labs is set to receive two awards over the next couple of weeks.
Ng, who specializes in using MBE to fabricate optical devices based on the wide-bandgap semiconductor, will pick up the inaugural Young Investigator Award at this week's North American MBE conference being held at Duke University, NC.
And at the Electrochemical Society's international meeting, being held at the end of October in Cancun, Mexico, Ng will pick up the Charles W Tobias Young Investigator Award.
Bell Labs legend Al Cho pioneered the MBE deposition technique during the late 1960s.
