Make LED emit incandescent light

In the long night, when you are alone, have you ever missed the bright yellow light of incandescent lamps? In Japan, incandescent lamps have been banned due to their low energy efficiency, but many people still miss the warm light of incandescent lamps. How can we preserve this precious and special light source while improving energy efficiency? Panasonic decided to combine incandescent lamps with LEDs, and thus CLEAR LED was born.

In fact, current LED lights also have their weaknesses, which is the diffusion of light. It would be great if the advantages of incandescent lamps could be integrated into LED lights. Well, that's what Panasonic thinks~

Panasonic engineers said that the combination of incandescent lamps and LEDs is the most perfect lighting. It brings a warm and nostalgic atmosphere and can also reduce energy consumption. The head of Panasonic's CLEAR LED development team said that as an old technician, he was not used to the sudden disappearance of the incandescent lamps that he had used for a long time, so they were able to produce CLEAR LED.

So, how can LEDs emit light like incandescent bulbs? The secret lies in the filament. The initial development issues are "form" and "light diffusion". Since LEDs are linear light sources, it is difficult for light to diffuse.

Conventional LED bulbs are translucent, and reflectors are added to spread the light. However, since the light of an incandescent bulb needs to be reproduced, translucency is not feasible. To solve this problem, a filament codenamed LDA4LC came into the developer's sight.

CLEAR LED uses transparent alumina as the substrate, which makes the light penetration and heat conduction better.

Then there is another question. General LED lamps have a built-in fixed aqua-green light-transmitting plate with yellow phosphor on top. So what about CLEAR LED? The answer is that the phosphor is sandwiched between two transparent substrates, and the surface is extremely smooth, so that it can reproduce the soft and warm light of incandescent lamps.

In order to reproduce the effect of an incandescent lamp, the position of the light source is exactly the same as that of an old incandescent lamp. The two thin pillars and the wires that carry electricity are exactly the same. The goal is to make everything exactly the same except that the light source is changed to LED.

As a light bulb, another point that needs to be solved is energy efficiency. Usually LED light bulbs are covered by a large heat sink, so that heat energy is not lost and the LED life is increased.

However, the filament used by Panasonic CLEAR LED is floating in the air, so the original large heat sink cannot be used. The production team decided to go all out and simply used a new type of white resin to sandwich the gap between the filament and the support.

The resin is suitable for heat dissipation and has high plasticity. The heat of the LED is transferred to the resin through the aluminum alloy with high thermal conductivity for heat dissipation. The final effect is as shown in the picture above.

In order to achieve the same effect as incandescent lamps, Panasonic developers spent a lot of time dimming the LEDs to achieve the brightest and most similar effect possible. The development team's goal was to make the color temperature exactly the same as that of 40W and 60W incandescent lamps. In order to achieve the bright and retro effect unique to incandescent lamps, the R&D staff put a lot of thought into it.

When actually used in electric lamps, the lighting visual effect that ordinary energy-saving lamps and LED lamps cannot match is revealed. The crystal lamp's sparkling and dreamy lighting effect is perfectly restored. A simple bulb completely changes the indoor atmosphere.

Just like a myriad of stars, such a beautiful lighting effect is absolutely incomparable to ordinary LED bulbs.

Panasonic CLEAR LED won the 2011 Japan GOOD DESIGN Gold Award and the 2012 German iF Product Design Award Gold Award. It has been sold in Japan and Europe, but has not yet entered China. I am looking forward to CLEAR LED entering the homes of ordinary people.

It is said that human's understanding of color temperature comes from the sunlight in ancient times. In the wild land of Yuangu, the clear yellow sunlight can bring warmth and hope to people. When Panasonic's engineers developed CLEAR LED, they must have had similar feelings, right?