High Brightness LEDs
Ways to Identify an HB-LED
There are two ways to identify an HB-LED: The intuitive way and a more technical way.
The first is very simple and direct: HB-LEDs are so bright that viewers cannot look directly at them without irritating their eyes.
The second is more technical. HB-LEDs come in two forms based on the semiconductor materials used to fabricate them.
AlInGaP, (pronounced alan-gap), composed of aluminum, indium, gallium, and phosphide, produce red, orange-red, orange, yellow-orange, amber, yellow, and green lighting units.
InGaN (pronounced n-gan), made of indium and a gallium-nitrade compound. It produces blue, blue-green, cyan, true-green and, when combined with a yellow phosphor, white.
Features and Benefits of HB-LEDs
The following is a list of features and benefits of HB-LEDs as identified by Arrow Electronics Lighting:
- Lower total cost of ownership compared to incandescent solutions
- Robust component design offering high reliability
- Resistance to shock and vibration
- Long life span (30,000 to 100,000 hours of continuous operation)
- Less-frequent lamp replacement
- Capability of flashing without reduced life span
- Ideal for outdoor, industrial, and automotive applications
- Saturated colors
- Ability to operate within –40°C to +125°C temperature range
- Small size
- Dimmable/brightness control without color shift
- Distinctive display designs to differentiate messages and products
- Environmentally friendly RoHS products; lead- and mercury-free
- No heat (IR) in the light beams
- Low-voltage DC operation
- Dynamic color control
Opportunity for Incandescent/Fluorescent Replacement
There is a growing retrofit market for replacing existing incandescent and fluorescent lighting with LED lighting solutions. This is due to recent dramatic improvement in HB-LED price/performance and is enforced by a move to eventually ban incandescent bulbs.
Directional Light
As previously mentioned, conventional lighting technology wastes up to 50 percent of the lumens generated in fixture losses. Since LED light is inherently directional when properly mounted, close to 100 percent of the light generated is usable in the application. We will now discuss how this affects efficiency the ratings of various light sources.
Efficacy Definition
The term effective refers to getting the desired result whereas the term efficient refers to the use of minimum resources to get the same desired result. The term efficacy refers to the capacity of some process or entity to produce both an efficient and effective result. Within the technology of lighting, the parameter used to measure the efficacy of a light source is called lumens per watt (LPW).
Lumens per Watt
As previously discussed, an LED uses less power than other conventional lighting technologies. The power dissipated by an LED is different for each LED type and can range from about .1 to over 25 watts.
LPW Efficacy
Table 1 compares the LPW, shown as lm/w, of HB-LEDs with other technologies. It reveals that HB-LED based light sources have the highest efficacy and also the longest service life.| Directional Light is Efficient Light |
| Table 1: Light Source Lumens Per Watt Efficacy |
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