By the numbers
Briefly looking at the history of a few different types of light sources helps provide some context for the LED's recent rapid progress. The
incandescent bulb, which was developed in 1879, had an initial luminous efficacy of 1.5 lm/W, which improved to 16 lm/W over the next 130 years. Fluorescent bulbs, first developed in 1938, achieved a luminosity increase of 50 to 100 lm/W over the next 60 years. The progress of white LEDs is much more pronounced: since their commercialization in 1996, white LEDs' luminous efficacy has increased from 5 lm/W to today's commercial white LED of 150 lm/W, the highest luminous efficacy of all white light sources.
The theoretical limit for white LEDs is about 260-300 lm/W.
Now, the Nichia researchers have taken the white LED's luminous efficacy a step further, achieving values as high as 265 lm/W at 5 mA of current, or 249 lm/W at 20 mA, values that nearly reach the theoretical limit. However, the downside of this specific design is that the luminous flux is quite low, about 14.4 lm. By modifying the design, the researchers demonstrated two other white LEDs: one with values of 203 lm and 183 lm/W at 350 mA, and one (as mentioned above) with values of 1913 lm and 135 lm/W at 1 A. This last
white LED was fabricated by connecting four high-power blue LED dies in series.