High-yield fabrication and economies of scale slash costs by 40%, making this latest incarnation more competitive with conventional lighting.
Acriche comes as a single emitter without a heat-sink PCB for greater design flexibility. The upgraded package handles up to 4 W, a first for semiconductor-based light sources, says the company. Acriche runs on 100 to 120 and 220 to 230 Vac, so it can be used in the U.S., South Korea, EU, China, India, the U.K., and Japan. No ac-dc converter is needed. The company plans to boost brightness from 60 to 80 lm/W in a 250-lumens package, and to 120 lm/W in a 400-lumens package sometime in 2008.
If Acriche were to replace all the incandescent and fluorescent lamps used in South Korea today, it would save an estimated $5.3 billion annually in electricity costs and eliminate 800,000 tons of carbon-dioxide emissions from five 1,000-MW power plants, the company claims.