Five firms win DOE funds for lighting
WASHINGTON, DC-The U.S. Department of Energy will provide $7 million for solid-state lighting product development to five U.S. companies: Color Kinetics, Eastman Kodak, General Electric Global Research, Osram Sylvania Development, and SRI International.
WASHINGTON, DC-The U.S. Department of Energy will provide $7 million for solid-state lighting product development to five U.S. companies: Color Kinetics, Eastman Kodak, General Electric Global Research, Osram Sylvania Development, and SRI International. Energy Department Secretary Samuel Bodman said solid-state lighting has the potential to more than double the efficiency of general lighting systems, reducing overall US energy consumption and saving consumers money.
Color Kinetics (Boston, MA) will develop replacement lamps for 60-W incandescent light sources with a target of 80 lm/W. The company will focus on package and system integration technology through the development of a novel hybrid-LED source that combines direct emission sources with phosphor-down converted emissions. Color Kinetics will share 25% of the costs for to the 18-month project, which is valued at $1.1 million.
Eastman Kodak (Rochester, NY) proposes to increase performance and durability of OLED devices to 50 lm/W by focusing on light extraction efficiency enhancement, low-operating voltage materials and structures with novel layering techniques. Kodak will share 40% of the costs of the 24-month, $1.9 million project.
General Electric Global Research (Niskayuna, NY), will build on previous work that incorporates the use of novel nanophosphors to create white light from violet LEDs. Its goal is to create a LED lamp to replace incandescent bulbs that will be about as efficient as present fluorescent lamps, with comparable light color quality. It will share 35% of the costs for the 36-month project, which is valued at $3.7 million.
Sylvania Development (Beverly, MA) will address the problem that light is created inside an LED lamp but has a difficult time escaping from the lamp and other optical parts. Sylvania will seek to increase the external quantum efficiency by using remote phosphors and employing a multilayer thin-film coating technique to increase the probability of light escaping, with a target of 80 lm/W in the bulbs. The company will share 20% of the costs for the $600,000, 24-month project.
SRI International (Menlo Park, CA) will develop a surface-cavity-injection process to increase the efficiency of OLEDs by channeling light out of the device, thereby reducing optical loss. The team goal is a fivefold increase in the external quantum efficiency over standard OLEDs, at twice the brightness. SRI will share 20% of the 36-month project, valued at $2.6 million.
