High Efficiency LED Lamp for Solid-State Lighting

This report contains a summary of technical achievements during a three-year project to demonstrate high efficiency, solid-state lamps based on gallium nitride/silicon carbide light-emitting diodes. Novel chip designs and fabrication processes are described for a new type of nitride light-emitting diode with the potential for very high efficiency. This work resulted in the demonstration of blue light-emitting diodes in the one watt class that achieved up to 495 mW of light output at 350 mA drive current, corresponding to quantum and wall plug efficiencies of 51% and 45%, respectively. When combined with a phosphor in Cree's 7090 XLamp package, these advanced blue-emitting devices resulted in white light-emitting diodes whose efficacy exceeded 85 lumens per watt. In addition, up to 1040 lumens at greater than 85 lumens per watt was achieved by combining multiple devices to make a compact white lamp module with high optical efficiency