High-efficacy green LED is industry breakthrough

In the world of LEDs, not all colors are colors are equally efficacious: Green LEDs are the least efficient.. 3M recently announced that it took an OSRAM blue ThinGan LED and bonded it with a proprietary color-converting material that absorbs the blue light and re-emits  it as green. 3m said, “Record green emission of 216 lumens was achieved, with 181 lumens per watt efficiency at a drive current of 350 mA/mm².”

LED guru Doug Leeper emailed the announcement to me last week with this note, “This is six times more efficient for a “Green” LED than has ever been achieved. Green is our major power consumer in the backlights, it could basically cut our power by ½ the current power needs.  It would also make RGB more efficient than white LEDs.”

Green lasers are also increasing in efficiency: OSRAM announced lab results last August for a direct-emitting green indium-gallium-nitride (InGaN) laser diode, an industry first.

[Via LightTimes.]