Rolling Thunder said:
The news about the photosynthetically accurate 200 watt LED diode being only about ten years away is the smoke that tells of the raging fire which is not far behind. Someone is going to get burnt and HPS is the most likely victum of the two. HPS is already being given a run for its money by single watt diodes. It will never hold a candle to a photosynthetically accurate 200 watt diode, that's for sure.
Here is a couple of 4 year old articles on LED R&D, which provide the earlier HT article with some much needed context; and which affords us at the same time a glimpse into how far LED research has come, within just the past few years:-
BRIGHTEST LED ARRAY RECORD
hXXp://led.linear1.org/brightest-led-array-record/
WESTAMPTON, NJ – February 8, 2005 - Lamina Ceramics today announced it has developed an ultra-high lumen LED white light engine 14 times brighter than any previously demonstrated white light LED array. The 28,000 lumen solid-state device is 5 inches square and is powered by 1,400 watts. It is more than twice as bright as the record-setting RGB (red-green-blue) light engine the company unveiled just a little more than three months ago.
“Lamina is the established provider of high lumen LED sources, and this development positions us as the only provider of ultra-high lumen LED light engines,” stated Taylor Adair, president and CEO of Lamina Ceramics. “Just over three months ago, 10,000 lumen light engines were thought to be impossible to manufacture because of heat build up. Our proprietary technology enabled us to break that barrier. Lamina’s latest LED light engine is approaching the 30,000 lumen mark.”
The new light engine – branded Aterion™ White – is comprised of 1,120 LEDs with a 5,500°K color-corrected temperature (CCT) and a color rendition index (CRI) of 80. The highly energy efficient array radiates no heat in its light beam and features instant-on, instant re-strike and fully dimmable capabilities.
In October 2004, Lamina’s Aterion RGB shattered the existing lumen-output record by a factor of 10. Hailed by researchers and lighting designers as a technology breakthrough, the 860 watt Aterion RGB generates a total 13,300 lumens in any of more than 16 million vibrant, saturated colors, including white.
“Following just on the heels of breaking what many thought was a technology barrier, Lamina has made another significant breakthrough with high lumen output LED sources, noted Robert V. (Bob) Steele, Ph.D., the foremost market researcher in the field of high brightness (HB) LEDs and Director of Optoelectronics at Strategies Unlimited. “These ultra-bright sources should have a significant impact on development of solid state lighting for many applications, including general illumination.”
Until the company’s October unveiling of the Aterion RGB light engine, development of ultra-high lumen LED arrays had been hindered by the inability of the LED packaging to wick away the heat and keep the LEDs cool, causing them to fail.
Lamina Ceramics’ proprietary multi-layer ceramic-on-metal packaging has solved that problem. Designated as low temperature co-fired ceramic-on-metal (LTCC-M), it is a breakthrough technological development providing an unmatched combination of thermal performance and interconnectivity between individual light-emitting diodes, resulting in lower mechanical stress, greatly lengthened LED life and reliability.
“Because of its new thermal management technology, Lamina is able to densely cluster hundreds of LEDs, resulting in a solid state light source that is many times brighter than anything previously reported,” explained Professor Ian Ferguson, PhD., School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. “For solid state lighting to penetrate deeper into the general illumination market – and if designers are to be fully able to exploit its many unique features – LED light sources must be brighter and must retrofit into existing fixtures. Lamina is demonstrating that with proper thermal management, extremely bright, cost effective LED light sources can be manufactured.”
LTCC-M technology emerged from years of research and development in the Sarnoff laboratories, the same labs that developed world-changing inventions such as color television, and key technologies used in cell phones, laptops, watches, today’s high definition television (HDTV) and satellite TV technology, to name a few.
Lamina, a venture-backed corporation, is the exclusive licensee of Sarnoff’s 12 years of research into LTCC-M. Lamina has continued Sarnoff’s spirit of innovation through the ongoing development and optimization of LED arrays.
2. SCIENTISTS DEVELOP NOVEL MULTI-COLOUR LIGHT-EMITTING DIODE:-
hXXp://led.linear1.org/scientists-develop-novel-multi-color-light-emitting-diodes/
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 17, 2005 – A team of University of California scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed the first completely inorganic, multi-color light-emitting diodes (LEDs) based on colloidal quantum dots encapsulated in a gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor. The work represents a new “hybrid” approach to the development of solid-state lighting. Solid-state lighting offers the advantages of reduced operating expenses, lower energy consumption and more reliable performance.
In research published in the current issue of the scientific journal Nano Letters, the team reports on the first successful demonstration of electroluminescence from an all-inorganic, nanocrystal-based architecture where semiconductor nanocrystals are incorporated into a p-n junction formed from semiconducting GaN injection layers. The new LEDs utilize a novel type of color-selectable nanoemitters, colloidal quantum dots, and makes use of emerging GaN manufacturing technologies.
According to Klimov, who leads the nanocrystal-LED research effort, “numerous technologies could benefit from energy efficient, color-selectable solid-state lighting sources ranging from automotive and aircraft instrument displays to traffic signals and computer displays. Semiconductor nanocrystals, known also as quantum dots, are attractive nanoscale light emitters that combine size-controlled emission colors and high emission efficiencies with chemical flexibility and excellent photostability. The use of nanocrystals in light-emitting technologies has, however, always been hindered by the difficulty of making direct electrical connections to the nanocrystals. By putting the quantum dots between GaN injection layers, we’ve gotten around this difficulty.”
The secret to making the electrical connection to the quantum dots is the use of a technique developed at Los Alamos by Mark Hoffbauer and his team that utilizes a beam of energetic, neutral nitrogen atoms for growing GaN films. The technique, called ENABLE (for Energetic Neutral Atom Beam Lithography/Epitaxy), allows for the low-temperature encapsulation of nanocrystals in semiconducting GaN without adversely affecting their luminescence properties. By encapsulating one nanocrystal layer or two layers of nanocrystals of different sizes, the researchers have demonstrated that their LEDs can emit light of either a single color or two different colors. The two color-operation regime is an important step toward creating devices that produce white light.
The development of the multicolor LEDs is the result of a collaboration between two Laboratory research groups: Klimov’s quantum-dot team and Hoffbauer’s team developing advanced nanoscale processing technologies. Laboratory researchers critical to the project’s success also include Alexander Mueller, Melissa Petruska, Marc Achermann, Donald Werder, and Elshan Akhadov. Daniel Koleske of Sandia National Laboratories provided the GaN substrates used for the LED structures.
The Los Alamos Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program provided funding for the Los Alamos work as an Exploratory Research (ER) project. The research fits into a broader area of expertise that Los Alamos National Laboratory maintains in the field of nanotechnology in general, and quantum dot research in particular. (END OF THE TWO ARTICLES)
So, then, just four short years ago,
"Lamina’s latest LED light engine" was
"approaching the 30,000 lumen mark.” Now they have a 200 watt diode with an output of 200,000 lumens! And high efficiency white light LEDs are now in the market, and being used in some LED grow lights. Viewed from the standpoint of that progress over a mere 4-5 year period, it is not hard for me to envision a high efficiency 200w full spectrum diode being literally just around the corner, in a manner of speaking, precisely as implied by Kushman in his HT article (as linked above)! - RT