Global lighting solutions manufacturer ams OSRAM bolstered its horticultural lighting offerings in June, announcing the addition of two new products.

The company continues to provide important innovation based on customer input by creating light-emitting diode (LED) solutions that produce high photosynthetic photon flux (PPF) at higher efficacy than the previous generations of Hyper Red 660 nm LEDs.

Consequently, the new offerings are the fifth generation OSLON Square Hyper Red LED and the new OSLON Optimal Red LED, which will both allow indoor farmers to produce faster growing and healthier plants.

The OSLON Square Hyper Red LED is designed to offer faster plant growth and enable optimised system cost.

The OSLON Square Hyper Red LED is intended for use in all horticultural lighting applications including greenhouse top-lighting and inter-lighting, sole source lighting, and vertical farming applications.

The new Hyper Red LED achieves a wall plug efficiency of 78.8% at a junction temperature of 25 ºC, compared with the previous generation, which has a wall plug efficiency of 76.8%.

It will help indoor plant growers cut energy costs for illuminating all types of crops grown under artificial lighting, including vegetables, flowers and medicinal plants.

In addition, the Hyper Red is encased in a ceramic-based package – as is the entire OSLON Square family of LEDs – leading to high tolerances against humidity and other harsh conditions experienced in indoor farming.

In longevity, the Hyper Red raises the standard, achieving an exceptionally long Q90 lifetime of 102 000 hours, enabling stable harvesting results.

The LED also withstands electrostatic discharge strikes of up to 8 kV, according to the American National Standards Institute/ Electrostatic Discharge Association/ Joint Electron Device Engineering Council JS-001 standards.

“ams OSRAM’s innovation in red chip technology continues to raise the performance of horticulture LEDs, providing growers with higher efficiency in a standard LED package at the crucial Hyper Red 660 nm wavelength,” says ams OSRAM marketing manager Thomas Grebner.

He adds that ams OSRAM’s technology provides growers with a simple means of upgrading luminaire designs and reducing energy costs, while maintaining high crop yields.

Additionally, the new Optimal Red with 640 nm enables broader spectral coverage for better growth of common plant types.

Providing broader coverage of the red portion of the spectrum, the Optimal Red LED joins the 660 nm Hyper Red and 730 nm Far Red in the OSLON Optimal family, which also includes a 450 nm Deep Blue LED and a “horti-white” LED.

Grebner says it has been common practice in horticulture to illuminate crops with a mix of 660 nm, 450 nm and 730 nm, or 660 nm and white LEDs for plants that require full-spectrum light.

Initial research conducted by tertiary institute Wageningen University, in the Netherlands, on behalf of ams OSRAM shows that a double red peak – being 640 nm and 660 nm – in combination with “horti-white” increases the dried biomass level in indoor growing environments.

“Further, the use of Optimal Red helps prevent photo bleaching in some plant varieties,” he says.

Experience shows that it can also prevent the incidence of fungal and bacterial infection in leafy greens, such as basil.

The Optimal Red can play an important part in raising energy efficiency and reducing the cost of electric power in all horticultural lighting applications, including greenhouse top-lighting and inter-lighting, and vertical farming.

Producing 3.53 µmol/J, it achieves very high wall plug efficiency of 66.3%.

The LED’s radiant flux is 485 mW, and photon flux is 2.58 µmol/s, with peak wavelengths of 640 nm and the dominant wavelength being 630 nm.

“The discovery of new recipes that include a double red peak of Hyper Red and Red is helping growers maintain superior plant health,” says Grebner.

With the introduction of the Optimal Red, horticultural lighting equipment manufacturers can achieve very high levels of efficiency and reliability.
Ceramic Package
The OSLON Optimal LED range is a high-power ceramic package based on a 1 mm² die and a standard 3030 footprint with a Lambertian emission profile.

The OSLON Optimal portfolio of products, based on the latest ams OSRAM 1 mm2 chip technology, provides stable light output over a wide temperature range, as well as very low thermal resistance and long lifetime.

“The Optimal Red product is suitable for horticultural purposes as well as for use in general lighting applications such as architectural entertainment and signal lighting,” Grebner concludes.