Cree, here comes the competition (Nichia 138 lm/W)

Well, almost but it looks promising.

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Nichia has developed LEDs with indium tin oxide contacts that can deliver an efficacy of 138 lm/W and an output of 402 lumens at 2A.
Japanese LED chip manufacturer Nichia has produced a small white-emitting LED chip that has an efficacy of 138 lm/W at 20 mA, and a larger device that delivers 92 lm/W at 350 mA.

The small chip, which measures 240 µm x 420 µm, has a color temperature of 5450K, a wall plug efficiency of 41.7% , and a forward voltage of 3.11 V at 20 mA.

The 1 mm x1 mm chip has a slightly lower color temperature and efficacy, but can deliver 106 lumens at 350 mA and 402 lumens at 2A, which is equivalent to the total flux of a 30W incandescent lamp.

Both of the MOCVD-grown devices produce white light by exciting a yellow YAG phosphor with 450 nm emission from an InGaN/GaN LED. The high efficacy of the chips results from improvements in external quantum efficiency, according to Nichia's researchers.

See the whole news release: http://compoundsemiconductor.net/articles/news/10/11/15/1

Let the battle begin maybe I should put off buying a light till 2008 or so....

Nichia's results were obtained using pulsed operation (200Hz repition rate, and a duty cycle of 1 %). Cree provided no details of its mode of operation.

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Don't be so fast to drool over those numbers. I'd wait until they have a sample out and we hear about it after testing in real world conditions.

They'll be able to shine eachothers eyes out at the end if this month... LED Leadership convention. I must admit I too jumped on the Cree bandwagon, I'm sure the other major players (especially Luxeon) will have an answer soon, which on that occasion will be answerred by another MFGs new product. For now, Cree is the ultimate in SLED's, we'll see what the future brings us. I'm sure it's very, very bright!

Seems that Lumilled is the only player holding out for now...

I'm sure Lumileds will have something up their sleeve.

They're too big and powerful not to, and the knowledge about increasing
the efficiency of the leds is surely not limited to one or two mad
scientists working for Cree. :shrug:

My advice would be to keep hold of some of our luxeon lights rather than
selling them all off.

Imagine if Lumileds brought out their new improved luxeon that was better
than the CreeXRE and would have been an easy upgrade in a light that had
been sold off.

It would leave one feeling as sick as a parrot. :sick2:

Hi there,

Sounds good to me. Maybe i need to change my signature line too...
"Leds vs Leds...the battle is on!"

hee hee

if Luxeon does come out with something better i doubt it would be any time soon.
If you look at how long it took them to release the K2 you'll know that it would be at least another year. not to mention that it was a big let down.
the XR-E on the other hand is here now and it is as good as advertised.

the battle is not really on until they start selling them and people have them in their hands.

hype talk dont mean anything (remember the K2)

the XR-E is proven in pratical use. when these finally become available things will definitely get interesting.

for those of u holding out y not just prepare a tri emitter module for ur mag c/d n mount on an XR-E for now n leave the other 2 for the nichia and limileds offerings when theyre available. then ull have all 3

Amonra said:

if Luxeon does come out with something better i doubt it would be any time soon.
If you look at how long it took them to release the K2 you'll know that it would be at least another year. not to mention that it was a big let down.
the XR-E on the other hand is here now and it is as good as advertised.

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I couldn't agree more. I am hoping to acquire many Cree-based lights and am very excited at the prospect.

However IMO, its not worth discarding every single luxeon light I own. At some point Lumileds will advance. They must realise that they messed up with the K2 and it will be a matter of urgency for them to come out with something to compete with CreeXRE or risk losing all their big clients like Surefire, Streamlight and all the Chinese manufacturers.

I can't believe they'll allow that to happen.

I dont think that Lumileds would come up with a different type of led as that would take even longer for the retooling and redesigning.
I think they will just release their better flux and vf bins which have been sitting on the shelf waiting for the right time. they would have to be WxxH bins to compete with the XR-E tho.

The part that really got me was how they pulsed the die with 1% duty cycle, to measure the output during the pulse on time, to help keep the die cool. It just reminds me of specmanship...

"Nichia results were obtained using pulsed operation (200Hz repition rate, an a duty cycle of 1%)."

Once you look at this, you realize you'd get 100% output for 1/100th the time. So you get 1/100th the light output, with no derating for the heat generated, since it is off for 99% of the time, allowing things to cool down. I guess most folks attention spans don't last until the end of the story.


Anyhow, it was a good PR stunt.


.

Don't all the LED manufacturers do crap like that though?

rats... too good to be true, but hey more should be coming down the pike.

Look at the 350mA figures, they are worse than current (although currently "unobtanium") PRODUCTION Cree's. 92lm/watt is a Q3 bin Cree XR-E, so Nichia announcing this as "coming soon" doesn't seem like a huge deal to me... and I didn't read the whole thing, but if the Nichia ratings are at 1% duty cycle, that's much worse than a Cree. Anyhow, reading through the press blurb, it really doesn't look that exciting, I think if this could have been a "now shipping" release 2 months ago, it'd have been huge news, but Nichia missed the boat, it left on the Cree, and they are still catching up.
Not to say that they won't catch up, and I hope they do, mfger competition means "we" all win.

Just less than a year ago the UXOJ were labeled "unobtanium"

Amonra said:

I dont think that Lumileds would come up with a different type of led as that would take even longer for the retooling and redesigning.
I think they will just release their better flux and vf bins which have been sitting on the shelf waiting for the right time. they would have to be WxxH bins to compete with the XR-E tho.

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It's most unlikely that they have many of these on the shelf, since they are simply examples of poor production.
Even if they did, the time to release them would be when they would command a high price because of rarity, rather than a low price because of competetion.

Ok Amonra, i'll change it to:
"Leds vs Leds: the battle is coming..."

Nichia always announced too early
You have to wait at least 6 month after sample released

I think Nichia is just trying to keep pace with Cree, at least in terms of public image. It was a rather pathetic stunt. I still think Nichia will reign supreme in the 5mm category for some time, but through gradual improvements of existing designs rather than giant leaps in technology. It seems to me that their victories in the lab have resulted in tangible gains; I've laid hands on some recently manufactured CS lights, and their color temperature is getting much better.

I'm quite used to the hype now, and I give it very little credence. We have XR-Es in our hands right now. That is reality. Everything else is just noise.