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How Quantum Dot is improving LED lighting applications.

Osram's new mid-power LED, the OSCONIQ S 3030 QD (Quantum Dot), was specially developed for area lighting and downlight applications and enables luminaires with high efficiency and excellent colour rendering for the retail, office, hospitality and education markets.

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Picture: OSCONIQ S 3030. OSRAM

What makes the OSCONIQ S 3030 so special? Well, these professional LEDs powered by quantum dot technology promise to change the face of general lighting fundamentally. Whether they’re used in shops, homes, industrial sites, or at the office, the groundbreaking OSCONIQ LEDs are characterized by a long lifetime, high performance and best-in-class reliability. Specially developed for area lighting and downlight applications, OSCONIQ S 3030 enables customers to benefit from high-quality LEDs with the highest efficacy and unbeatable colour rendering.

Quantum dots (QDs), like the ones inside Osram’s OSCONIQ S 3030 QD, can be as small as 10 atoms in diameter—about 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a single human hair, and yet in this tiny package, there is so much potential for advanced applications in a multitude of fields, from lighting to display and beyond. Despite being available to the technical community since the early ’90s, Osram’s lighting product marks the first time that QDs have been incorporated directly into LED packages for light conversion, greatly expanding the possible uses of the materials. Once they have been stabilized to operate at high temperatures and power densities, QDs are an ideal converter for a wide range of LED applications; they have an extremely narrow emission peak that can be tuned to any wavelength from the UV to the NIR, very high absorption, very low self-absorption, and nanosecond excited-state lifetimes.

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Picture: Schematic of an OS quantum dot, with the blue, LED light coming in, and red light emitted. The blue and red spheres are the different layers of the quantum dot. OSRAM

The inclusion of QDs in LEDs, especially in the OSCONIQ S 3030 QD, promises to expand and improve the lighting industry by replacing broad-emitting, bulky phosphors with nanosized particles, which will mean higher efficiency and better colour for illumination and visualization. QDs will bring precise tuning of light quality and significantly improve the conversion efficiency of LED solutions. They also easily provide lighting at made-to-order colour, colour temperature, spectral power and brightness. The emission adjustable QDs make it easier to subtly adjust LEDs to whichever lighting metrics are needed while ensuring efficiency over the course of the day. The great advantage of the OS QD technology is that the existing LED manufacturing processes remain the same, but the much more efficient QDs are used instead of conventional phosphors when the converter material is applied, making them brighter without altering the manufacturing cost.

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Picture: Orange powder is what the quantum dots look like before they get mixed into the slurry for dispensing into packages. OSRAM

Some manufacturers already use quantum dots in TVs by installing a film of QDs in front an LED display to filter colour, enhance reds and greens and create good separation between the colours so they don’t bleed into one another. However, TV screens will provide even more life-like images when red and green QDs are actually inside the LEDs. This will provide better filtering and colour separation for a crisper image. In addition, because QDs in LEDs eliminate the need to add a separate component to a display, such as the film of QDs, this will lower costs, which can be passed on to the manufacturers. Due to their very high absorption and small size, QDs also offer an ideal solution for microLED conversion, opening the door to RGB imagers in wearables and other applications.

The OSCONIQ S 3030 was recently chosen as a Silver Winner of the 2020 Edison Awards by a panel of over 3,000 leading business executives from around the world. It was also a finalist for the 2020 Prism Awards in the category of energy and was named one of the top 10 “must-see” products at the 2019 Lightfair.

Find more about Quantum Dot Technology: https://www.osram.com/os/technologies/quantum_dot_technology.jsp

Please note:
Featured product pricing relates to the pack price, for unit price click through to RS

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