Osram LED breaks the kilolumen barrier
German LED manufacturer Osram Opto Semiconductors has developed a new six-chip light source that delivers a brightness of more than a kilolumen at a very high conversion efficiency.
The output is brighter than a 50 W halogen lamp, suiting the LED to a range of applications in the general lighting sector.
Osram says that samples of the LED will be produced over the next three months. Following that, a production ramp and full launch is planned for summer 2007.
The new LED is based on established components, which means that progress from the development stage to the production stage will be rapid, says Osram. The enormous increase in brightness is attributed to major improvements to the overall system of chip and package.
The high-flux LED is equipped with six closely packed 1 mm2 high-power chips. The high chip packing density leads to the high luminance. In practice, this means that a single O-star lighting source with a 38° reflector is all that is required to illuminate a desk with more than 500 lux from a height of 2 m.
Osram adds that the O-star now produces 75 lm/W at the high operating current of 350 mA. The LED was developed under Germany s BMBF NanoLux program (see link).
Osram is the latest of the major LED manufacturing companies to reveal substantial improvements in LED chip and packaging technology for white-light emitters.
Cree and Lumileds have both made recent breakthroughs in raw chip efficacy (see related stories), while Korea s Seoul Semiconductor has developed a cool-white single-emitter that produces 240 lm.
