Cree's cool-white XLamp offers 100 lm minimum
Chip manufacturer Cree has released a cool-white version of its XLamp LED range that delivers a minimum luminous flux of 100 lm at 350 mA.
Based around a 1mm x 1mm XR-E high-brightness GaN chip, the new XLamp is available in production quantities with a lead time of 6-12 weeks, depending on the volumes required.
The Durham, North Carolina, firm stressed the importance of the manufacturing breakthrough: "This is an announcement of volume availability, not a research and development result or availability of a few parts," said Norbert Hiller, Cree s general manager for lighting LEDs.
Cree told compoundsemiconductor.net that the 100 lm XLamp was available in cool-white tones (between 5000 and 10,000 K), and suitable for outdoor area illumination like streetlights, tunnels and parking lots, as well as in portable applications such as torches.
Cree did not indicate whether a warm-white equivalent that would be more suited to interior lighting applications was in the pipeline, however.
The new XLamp is said by Cree to be both 25% brighter than its previous XLamp generation, and to offer better efficacy.
For comparison, the top-end cool-white (6500 K) LEDs in the rival Rebel product range from Philips Lumileds deliver a minimum luminous flux of 80 lm when driven at 350 mA. Lumileds best natural white (4100 K) emitters also offer an 80 lm minimum flux at that current, rising to 145 lm at 700 mA.
LED industry commentator Bob Steele from Strategies Unlimited added that the availability of the new high-performance XLamps should accelerate the conversion of the lighting market to solid-state sources.
