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Color Quality of White LEDs

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III-Nitride Based Light Emitting Diodes and Applications

Part of the book series: Topics in Applied Physics ((TAP,volume 126))

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the fundamentals of chromaticity and color rendering, the two important aspects of color quality of light sources for general illumination. There is a special focus on the use of solid state light sources. The section on chromaticity discusses chromaticity coordinates and diagrams, correlated color temperature (CCT), Duv, and specifications for color differences. The section on color rendering discusses object color evaluation, the color rendering index (CRI) and the shortcomings thereof, and color quality beyond CRI, introducing the color quality scale (CQS), a proposed alternative metric. The chapter also discusses luminous efficacy of radiation and the color characteristics used for single-color LEDs. Finally, future considerations on color quality for white LED developments are given.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Incandescent lamp with its glass envelope doped with neodymium, which absorbs much of the yellow portion of the lamp spectrum. This type of lamp is popularly sold in the USA and some other countries.

  2. 2.

    CMCCAT represents Color Measurement Committee (of the Society of Dyers and Colourists for predicting the degree of color inconsistency of surface colors) Chromatic Adaptation Transform.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dr. Wendy Davis at the University of Sydney for her valuable inputs and discussions to some of the sections in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sensor Science Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Yoshi Ohno

Authors
  1. Yoshi Ohno
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Correspondence to Yoshi Ohno .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Materials Science & Engineering, Korea University, Anam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, 136-713, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    Tae-Yeon Seong

  2. Electrical Engineering, Yale University, Prospect Street 15, New Haven, 06520, Connecticut, USA

    Jung Han

  3. Electrical Engineering & Comp. Science, Nagoya University, C3-1 Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, 464-8603, Aichi, Japan

    Hiroshi Amano

  4. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, W Main St 601, Richmond, 23284-3072, Virginia, USA

    Hadis Morkoc

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Ohno, Y. (2013). Color Quality of White LEDs. In: Seong, TY., Han, J., Amano, H., Morkoc, H. (eds) III-Nitride Based Light Emitting Diodes and Applications. Topics in Applied Physics, vol 126. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5863-6_13

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