White LEDs go brighter

Osram development engineers are claiming new records for the brightness and efficiency of white LEDs in the laboratory.

Under standard conditions with an operating current of 350 mA, brightness peaked at 155 lm and efficiency at 136 lm/W.

In generating these results, researchers used white prototype LEDs with 1 mm² chips. The light produced had a colour temperature of 5000 K, with colour coordinates at 0.349/0.393 (cx/cy).

The key to this success was the interplay among all the advances made in materials and technologies. A perfectly matched system of optimised chip technology, an advanced and efficient light converter and a special high-performance package all combined to produce these results.

Potential applications for this high-performance LED technology include general illumination, the motor vehicle sector and any application that calls for large high-power LEDs.

These semiconductor light sources are also suitable for high operating currents. At 1.4 A, they can produce up to 500 lm of white light. This means that in the future the LEDs can also be used for projection applications as blue and green chip versions.