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4 September 2009

 

Seoul’s Acriche A4 AC LED provides 75lm/W and CRI of 85

South Korean LED maker Seoul Semiconductor Inc has launched the Acriche A4 LED, which it claims has not only a luminous efficiency of 75lm/W but also an output that appears close to a natural white light (unlike other high-efficiency white LEDs, which have a cold bluish-white output unsuitable for many forms of illumination).

Two-third’s of the world's lighting consists of warm-white lights (with a color temperature of 2700-3000K); Seoul Semiconductor says that its new A4 is capable of replacing such warm-white incandescent and compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) light sources in many applications.

Currently, white LEDs are divided into two major markets:

  • products with a normal color rendering index (CRI) of 70-80 (e.g. of high-efficiency bluish-white LEDs), which focus more on brightness than on color and have the disadvantage of being different from natural light;
  • products with a high color rendering index (CRI) greater than 85 (closer to the ideal CRI of 100 of natural light), which suit high-quality light applications but are often much less bright than their lower-CRI counterparts.

Consequently, normally a trade-off is required between brightness and CRI (the naturalness of the white-light output).

However, Seoul Semiconductor says that the Acriche A4 can satisfy both CRI and brightness, overcoming the previous requirement to lower luminous efficiency by several tens of percent in order to achieve high CRI. In contrast, the A4 has a color temperature of 3000K and includes new technologies that provide a high CRI of 85 with a high luminous efficiency of 75lm/W.

This is also the first time that an alternating current (AC) LED has achieved better luminous efficiency than LEDs that run on direct current (DC), claims Seoul Semiconductor. “With the mass production of the Acriche A4 series, we will be able to provide both high-quality and normal-use markets with light sources that have exceptional performance and lower prices,” says the firm.

Search: Seoul Semiconductor LEDs

Visit: www.acriche.com