Aug 26 2009
Seoul Semiconductor Inc., a world-leading LED manufacturer held a press conference in Korea, the US and China on August 26th to celebrate a new product, the Acriche A4 with the world's best luminous efficiency of 75lm/W, and introduced the A4 to the mass market.
Two-third's of the world's lighting consists of warm white lights (2700K to 3000K); the newly announced product is to be mass produced and readily available this quarter, capable of replacing warm white incandescent and CFL light sources in many applications.
Currently, white LEDs are divided into two major markets: products with a High Color Rendering Index (CRI) greater than 85, which is close to natural light, and products with a Normal CRI of 70 to 80. High CRI products will often be significantly less bright than their lower CRI counterparts, but due to their similarity to natural light High CRI sources are excellent for high quality light applications. LEDs with normal CRI focus more on brightness than on color and have the disadvantage of being different from natural light. Consequently, a compromise was required between brightness and CRI.
The new and highly innovative Acriche A4 product has technology that is able to satisfy both CRI and brightness. The past requirement of lowering luminous efficiency by several tens of percent is overcome by the A4. The A4 devices have a color temperature of 3000K and include multiple new technologies that provide excellent efficiency of 75 lumens per watt (lm/W) with a High CRI of 85.
Alternating Current (AC) LEDs with better luminous efficiency than LEDs with Direct Current (DC) for the first time is very significant. Seoul Semiconductor stated that "with the mass production of the Acriche A4 series, we will be able to provide both high quality and normal use markets with light sources that have exceptional performance and lower prices. With the A4 series, we want to spread the name 'Acriche' far and wide as the world's best LED brand."
Significant advantages of the Acriche A4 series include:
- It is possible to use Acriche products on AC power freely between 100V and 230V without additional conversion. Only a simple, inexpensive diode bridge is required.
- Different than other Acriche products (such as the popular A2 and A3 series), the A4 uses 50Vrms per package and 110V-220V can be achieved by connecting multiple devices in whatever manner is needed.
- Whether used in light bulbs or light structures with arrays of LEDs, the best suitable design is guaranteed due to the degree of freedom of placement and configuration of the A4.
*CRI (Color Rendering Index):
Color Rendering Index (Ra) indicates how much a light resembles a natural light source with the influence of the light on various colors of objects. It is measured in units from 0 to 100, where 100 indicates the most similar to natural light.