Cree Is A Market Leader in LED Technology Development

A North Carolina-based LED research company, LED Lighting Fixtures, announced that it had created the world's most energy-efficient LED light, one that uses 5.8 watts of electricity to create as much light as a 60-watt incandescent lightbulb. And following that news, LED Lighting Fixtures also announced that they are now part of Cree, Inc.

The company is developing a lamp that uses less energy than its current LED fixtures but emits the same amount of light. A federal study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology confirms that the product is the most efficient in the world. It uses 5.8 watts of power, compared with 60 watts for an equally bright incandescent bulb.

According to the National Institute report, the new fixture uses less than 9 percent of the energy consumed by common bulbs and less than 30 percent of that consumed by fluorescent lights. LLF's best existing product consumes 15 percent of the energy used by an incandescent bulb and 50 percent of that used by fluorescents.

Hunter said he hopes to debut the brighter and more efficient lamps by the end of 2008. The first buyers will likely be wholesale distributors, followed by consumers off store shelves by 2009.

Cree Overview

Cree, Inc. is a market-leading innovator and manufacturer of semiconductors that enhance the value of LED solid-state lighting, power and communications products by increasing their energy performance.

Key to Cree’s market strategy is unrivaled materials expertise in silicon carbide (SiC) with gallium nitride (GaN) to deliver chips and packaged devices that can handle more power in a smaller space while producing less heat than other available technologies, materials and products.

Cree drives solutions into multiple applications including exciting alternatives in brighter and more-tunable LED light for general illumination, backlighting for more-vivid displays, optimized power management for high-current, switch-mode power supplies and variable-speed motors, and more-effective wireless infrastructure for data and voice communications. Cree customers range from innovative lighting fixtures makers to defense-related federal agencies.

Cree’s product families include blue and green LED chips, lighting LEDs, LEDs for backlighting, power-switching devices and radio-frequency/wireless devices.