Manufacturers Lumileds, Bridgelux, and Luminus have added to their chip-on-board LED lineups, pushing advances in luminous efficacy, operating temperature tolerance, and color fidelity for demanding architectural solid-state lighting applications.
Lumileds (San Jose, CA) has launched the Luxeon COB Core Pro to address lighting needs in retail and hospitality recessed and track lighting scenarios. Senior product manager Keen Oun Yap said the LED’s typical 92 CRI and R9>50 produce “the hallmarks of a good retail lamp — sparkle and great color reproduction.” According to the product release, the Core Pro features a color point below the black body locus, closer to that of conventional ceramic discharge metal-halide (CDM) lamps. Led Strip
A 3000K, 90-CRI, 15-mm light-emitting surface (LES) version with Tj=85°C achieves around 152-lm/W efficacy. Yap added, “No mercury, no startup lag, no heat, and no color drift, just excellent color consistency over time and lower energy consumption.” Lumileds offers LES from 9 to 19 mm and luminous flux ranges from 700 lm to more than 5000 lm.
Bridgelux (Fremont, CA) has brought F90 COB LEDs to market, joining the company’s previous SMD and Filament families. The 90-CRI LEDs with LES from 8 to 22 mm can reach up to 190-lm/W efficacy — 20% greater than the Gen8 90-CRI COBs and 5% improvement over Gen8 80-CRI devices. Bridgelux says the F90 COB LEDs can operate in up to 85°C case temperatures at maximum drive currents, making them suitable for recessed can downlights in particular.
Nearly a year ago, the LED manufacturer launched its F90 SMD white LEDs utilizing phosphor technology licensed from GE Current (referred to as Current Lighting Solutions, LLC), which is claimed to produce a narrow emission band that reduces wasted energy outside the human visual range. LEDs Magazine has confirmed with Bridgelux CEO Yi-Qun Li that the new COB offerings leverage the potassium fluorosilicate phosphor (also called red-line emission phosphor) to deliver high CRI.
Last November, Luminus Devices (Sunnyvale, CA) debuted its Robusto technology with the high-lumen-output CVM-45 COB array for studio and stage lighting applications. The LED supplier claims the Robusto technology enables higher drive current while delivering L90 greater than 55,000 hours, with operating temperatures up to 120°C.
High center-beam candle power applications such as retail, hospitality, architectural, and specialty lighting benefit from the higher lumen density with narrow beam distribution. Back in 2016, Luminus authors noted in a contributed article that the CMD lamps favored for retail lighting would fall by the wayside as CBCP of LED lamps was improved for directional lighting scenarios.
“With Robusto technology, Luminus’ high-density COBs are able to provide customers with higher levels of CBCP, consistent color and flux over the life of the luminaire,” said David Davito, COB product line director – illumination at Luminus.
CARRIE MEADOWS is managing editor of LEDs Magazine, with 20 years’ experience in business-to-business publishing across technology markets including solid-state technology manufacturing, fiberoptic communications, machine vision, lasers and photonics, and LEDs and lighting.
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