Philips Lumileds introduced this week their latest illumination-grade LED, the Luxeon A. The new LED is said to eliminate the need for binning. It shares the Luxeon Rebel ES platform and footprint and incorporates a 2 mm 2 thin-film flip chip and Lumiramic phosphor technology to deliver the highest quality of light at 2700K and 3000K with very high efficacy and light output.
All Luxeon A LEDs are hot-tested and specified at a junction temperature of 85°C that represents real-world operating conditions. Lumileds’ chip and phosphor technology allows color targeting to ensure all Luxeon A emitters fall within a single 3-step MacAdam ellipse on the blackbody curve. The quality, uniformity, and consistency of the light from LED to LED relieve luminaire manufacturers and lighting designers of many of their long-held concerns about the suitability of LED technology for illumination applications.
The LED industry has long tested and specified products at an LED chip junction temperature of 25°C. It’s well known that in applications like down lights and retrofit lamps, LED junction temperatures are more likely to be near 85°C. This has meant that luminaire manufacturers have had to make many complex calculations to determine actual light output, efficacy, and color point of their products. Lumileds’ hot testing simplifies the entire process by providing the actual operating condition information so that there’s no ambiguity, performance hyperbole, or wasted engineering effort.
Luxeon A is available for sampling and design-in activities and will go into high-volume production in early May 2011.
