Nichie claims 150 lm/W

I didn't see any other posts about this, and I know we all drool over the prospects for LEDs over the coming months and years. So here we go:

Nichia Achieved 150 lm/W White LED Development

Now this particular press release is rather cryptic and sparse, but apparently they have white LEDs operating at 20 mA current which hit the 150 lumen per watt figure. Now if they can ramp the darn things up to a decent current level, we'll have a Cree-killer on our hands.

That would be about 10 Lumens for a 5mm LED driven to spec. Not too shabby!

Oh darn. Does this mean I'll have to upgrade my ArcAAA again? I used 2-ton epoxy to repot it, I don't think I can heat that up and pick it away so easy....

Would this 5mm be called Nichia DS?

What I find interesting about the higher efficiency LEDs is that they may solve their own heat-related issues over time. Up to now, we've had to ram decent levels of current through LEDs to achieve sufficient lumen output...and have had to deal with the residual heat with sinks and other approaches.

As efficacy improves, more battery energy is going to produce photons instead of heat. As the technology improves, less and less waste heat is generated by the LED, and that means longer battery life and less need for extensive heat-sinking. Which means potentially smaller and lighter-weight lights.

I suppose this means a new display case for all the upcoming, tiny and efficient lights I'll be buying, right?

And I guess a small, flimsy one will do just fine, then. :laughing:

Yup, instead of one way of using the leds you get two now with the better efficient ones.

The old way (old 5mm's, 20-30lumen luxeon1) was to drive them at spec or over to get enough light.

Now (nichia 5mm's, Cree XRE's) you can drive them to spec or over for TONS of light, or under drive them with little to no heatsinking and lots of runtime, with still a decent amount of useable light.

Cree has already claimed 135lm/W, which isn't greatly different.
(In a 5mm LED)
Who gets into production first...

Nichia claims a luminous flux of 9.4 lm and a color temperature of 4,600K at 20mA; this would give a test voltage slightly over 3.1 V. If as the press release seems to imply, these LEDs are the same as the NSPWR70AS, they are normally driven at 30 mA and 3.8 V so in normal use the efficiency would be lower than 150 Lm/W.

A little off topic, but Nichia is increasing their minimum order quantity for SMDs and Power LEDs to a full reel as of Jan. 1 2007:

http://store.nichia.com/index.asp

Efficacy is one thing but efficacy at high drive levels is another. Power LED's lose efficiency very quickly as drive current increases. For LED's to displace traditional lighting, these numbers need to scale up with drive levels in the hundreds of mA.

150 lumens per watt wooowee!

http://www.nichia.com/about_nichia/2006/2006_122001.html

probably been posted before but I couldnt find it cool eh

They just need to make it cheap then they'll take over !

Re: 150 lumens per watt wooowee!

Yes amazing, but look at the drive current. High efficency at 20mA is much easier then at 350mA or above. But I´m curious about the new high power device coming from nichia soon and it´s lumen/watt rating..

cheers
MikeRD03

Re: 150 lumens per watt wooowee!

I think 2007 is going to be an exciting and expensive year for us!

Re: 150 lumens per watt wooowee!

See this thread : http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=145434

chimo said:

That would be about 10 Lumens for a 5mm LED driven to spec. Not too shabby!

Click to expand...

Yes, and 1280 lumens for a 128 LED flashlight. And if you lowered it to say 5 ma, it would still probably be in the 400~500 lumen range, and not too hard on batteries...

Re: 150 lumens per watt wooowee!

To some extent I'm more excites by this than the Cree - I already have a AAA Dorcy with a Nichia CS U bin that ROCKS! Can you imagine a N cell keychain light that puts out 20 lumens? (I'm assuming some overdrive)

How about a modded PT Quad putting out ~80 lumens?

Re: 150 lumens per watt wooowee!

Calina said:

See this thread : http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=145434

Click to expand...

Your link goes to THIS thread.

Re: 150 lumens per watt wooowee!

LowBat said:

Your link goes to THIS thread.

Click to expand...

Strange isn't it? It is because the thread started by Stephen7372 was fused with this one by the administrator.

Re: 150 lumens per watt wooowee!

light_emitting_dude said:

I think 2007 is going to be an exciting and expensive year for us!

Click to expand...

Well, I've only been here six months or so...but I believe that every year is expensive for us!


CFU

I keep thinking it is time to have some mods done to some of my older lights, but then I keep hearing of more and more new LEDs coming out so I never know what to do. O the life of a flashoholic.

ScottyJ said:

I keep thinking it is time to have some mods done to some of my older lights, but then I keep hearing of more and more new LEDs coming out so I never know what to do. O the life of a flashoholic.

Click to expand...

Yep!

I have been thinking of modding my lights until I saw that the Seoul Semiconductor offering offered a emission pattern that was closer to the Luxeons. That sound like the current holy grail.

I have gone back and forth numerous times about modding a couple of my lights but I have always resisted due to the anticipation of quantum leaps in technology. It seems like the market was fairly stable with Luxeon I, III and V's for awhile and now it has just exploded.

I need to learn to mod my own lights.

CFU,

I feel your pain. I have to add that there was a time (I cannot remember it to distinctly) that I thought that $200 was a ton of money for a light. Now, I see new lights that come out that are well made and I am convinced that they are a bargain!

-Goatee