Cree Lighting has announced that, in 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 white XLamp 7090 power LEDs currently in production. (This suggests a maximum rating of 60 lumens for production XLamp 7090s, while the datasheet on Cree's website quotes a typical value of 45 lm.).
Steve Johnson, head of the Lighting Research Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said that the results indicate that the LED industry is at least two years closer than predicted to achieving the "Holy Grail" of 150 lumens per watt.
"Cree's announcement today 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."
These results incorporate technology that was in part developed with support provided by the U.S. Department of Energy(DOE), the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and by the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Advanced Technology Program.
