Nichia 10X LED's now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

Re: Nichia 10X LED\'s now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

Although I've not seen one in person, someone I know overseas has reported to me that it's not nearly as good as the Luxeon. Only about half brightness on average for the same current.

Maybe some growing pains and improvements to get done before it's released.

Re: Nichia 10X LED\'s now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

Are the new Nichia's the same size as the current nichia LED?

Do they take the same power?

If they did, I could see some cool new lights out there! (an ARC AAA that was TEN times as bright!)

Re: Nichia 10X LED\'s now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

Nope, they take about the same power as Luxeons do, but put out less lumens pretty much across the board. (See the link in McGizmo's post above for details.) Only in white does Nichia claim more lumens, but once the 30lm white LS comes out, the Luxeon will be ahead there as well. And Nichia doesn't have red or amber colors either.

Nichia 10X LED\'s now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

FYI:
In a e-mail I received from a Nichia Rep today, I was informed that the High Powered Nichia LED's will probably now be introduced at end of summer or even later in the year. It looks like the CPF group will be well involved with Luxeon 5W before Nichia 350 mA hits the picture.

- Don

Re: Nichia 10X LED\'s now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

I recently heard some news about the two high power Nichia offerings. No news is bad news - they are delayed till mid 2003 and then some.

The 350mA "blue with phosphor" type is in a surface mount package that looks something like a TO252 surface mount power MOSFET package. Initial data looks like 350mA @ 3.8V (1.3W) for ~23 lumens, though they say by the time these are available they will be brighter than that.

The other is a UV based LED in what looks like a ceramic package. Initial availability will be for UV only, but they intend to offer white using RGB phosphor (like a compact flourescent lamp) some time after the UV part hits the streets. This one is rated at 500mA (700mA max) @4V so is a 2+ W device. At 500mA it emits 100mW of UV light which is hard to translate to white lumens as it depends a lot on the phosphor.

The Vf's seem a lot higher than the Luxeon devices. Also, it looks like they are specifically focused in on the white light market compared with Lumileds where they are offering a good selection of colors.

Re: Nichia 10X LED\'s now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

Originally posted by php_44:
I recently heard some news about the two high power Nichia offerings. The other is a UV based LED in what looks like a ceramic package. Initial availability will be for UV only, but they intend to offer white using RGB phosphor (like a compact flourescent lamp) some time after the UV part hits the streets. This one is rated at 500mA (700mA max) @4V so is a 2+ W device. At 500mA it emits 100mW of UV light which is hard to translate to white lumens as it depends a lot on the phosphor.

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Using the numbers provided, that is only a 5% conversion efficiency to UV. Some RGB phosphor mixes have conversion efficiencies on the order of 50% [actually some a bit better]. "White light" produced by RGB mixes can have luminous *efficacy* of up to 300 lm/w[some a bit higher if you accept poor quality "white"] so the overall efficiency using these numbers would be:
(.05)X(.50)X(300lm/w)= 7.5 lm/w. Not very good. Things should improve with better UV conversion efficiency. One advantage to the RGB phosphor method is the ability to tightly control the "color" [CCT] of the white.

Re: Nichia 10X LED\'s now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

Great info, there Doug. I'm waiting too on those UV LEDs to improve so they can get on with that RGB phosphor thing. I'm really jealous of how fluorescent tube makers can tune their lights so well...

Re: Nichia 10X LED\'s now looking at Q3 or Q4 2002

Kinda sad to read this subject line again. Still no sign of 'em, and here we are in November...