LED maker Lumileds of San Jose, CA, USA has launched three new products in its LUXEON SunPlus Series of LEDs for horticulture lighting.
The LUXEON SunPlus Series is claimed to be the only line of LEDs on the market to be tested and binned by photosynthetic photon flux (PPF). The portfolio of colors enables wavelength tuning for maximum crop yield in both greenhouse and vertical farming applications. The addition to the LUXEON SunPlus 35 Line of Far Red and Deep Red will enable designers of vertical farm and interweaving fixtures to tune the spectrum specifically for the crop being grown. The new LUXEON SunPlus CoB Line, available in Purple, is designed for greenhouse applications where attaining high PPF and fast time to market are top priorities.
The LUXEON SunPlus 35 Line is optimized for vertical farming in shallow tiers, so uniformity is optimized at very short distances. The Deep Red (650-670nm) and Far Red (720-740nm) wavelengths join the existing Royal Blue (445-455nm), Lime (broad spectrum) and three shades of Purple with varying contributions of blue (2.5%, 12.5% and 25%) in a 3.5mm x 3.5mm format. “These essential red wavelengths are combined with blue to give the exact spectra needed for each crop,” says Jennifer Holland product line director of the LUXEON SunPlus Series. “Our Horticulture Lighting Calculator is especially helpful in this context because lighting manufacturers can experiment with LED ratios and spectral power distributions before building the fixtures.”
Customer success and market adoption of the LUXEON SunPlus 35 Purple and the need for even greater PPF in a single device led to the development of the LUXEON SunPlus CoB Purple (12.5% blue) product. In contrast to vertical farming, where lighting is positioned a short distance from plants, greenhouse lighting requires deep penetration into the plant canopy, which is achieved with a directional CoB. The CoB portfolio complements the LUXEON SunPlus 20 and 35 Lines, which offer a variety of colors to optimize the spectrum for greenhouse applications. The CoB form factor also means that standard optics, holders and drivers are available to help manufacturers accelerate time to market of their fixtures. “The chip on board approach allows us to maximize PPF to as high as 350µmol/s from a single source,” says Holland. The LUXEON SunPlus CoB Purple is available with 15mm, 19mm and 32mm light-emitting surfaces.