OSRAM LEDs homing in on office projectors

OSRAM will be showcasing these high-powered green LEDs to invited customers at the 2011 International CES (Consumer Electronics Show), Las Vegas, NV, January 6-9, 2011.



Now that RGB LEDs have already been established as the dominant technology to drive sequential color pico projectors, the next segment of growth is data projectors. This progression has been made possible by the enormous brightness increase of OSRAM’s green LEDs. The prototype with a single chip achieves 410 lm and emits at a wavelength of 553 nm. Since a greater proportion of green than red or blue is needed in a projector to produce white light, the increase in the brightness of the green LED has a significant effect on the overall system brightness. With these new LED prototypes, it is possible to produce systems that deliver an overall brightness of 2,000 lm which is required for office and education applications. LED projectors will soon be powerful enough for screen sizes of more than two meters diagonal. Until now, such applications have only been possible with projectors that use conventional light sources such as high-intensity discharge lamps.



“Doubling the brightness of the green LED is a giant leap forward and removes the restriction that LEDs are suitable only for small projectors,” said Michael Godwin, Director of LED Marketing at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors. Apart from providing brilliant image reproduction with saturated colors, LEDs enable projectors to be virtually maintenance-free because they have a life expectancy of over 30,000 hours. By contrast, high-intensity discharge lamps need to be replaced after only about 4,000 hours. Projectors with LEDs also provide instant power on, and they support seamless dimming. They can, therefore, adapt very easily to ambient light conditions which leads to reduced energy consumption. The color space can be set with a high degree of flexibility thanks to fine electronic control of the individual colors.