Nichia Corporation can now use industry leading TriGain® technology for superior color rendering and efficiency across its LED chip portfolio for use in general illumination applications

Today it was announced that Nichia Corporation will become the first to license TriGain® technology from GE Current, a Daintree company and deploy it into their LED chip portfolio for lighting applications globally. TriGain®, a potassium fluorosilicate (PFS) phosphor, is a breakthrough in phosphor technology that improves the color rendering for LEDs through its unique red emission, without sacrificing efficiency. Other solutions take a significant efficiency penalty to achieve similar color rendering.

Current’s TriGain® phosphor, with its patented narrow emission, presents a technological leap beyond the rest of the market for both color and efficiency. Only a few light sources can meet the guidance on the three design intents and priority levels of specification criteria for ANSI/IES TM-30 Annex E, and TriGain® stands alone as the only technology to do so with high efficacy. 

With industry requirements in color quality trending towards a more preferred performance range in fidelity and saturation, and TriGain® providing best-in-class color and efficiency, Nichia saw an opportunity to integrate the technology into its General Illumination products. 

Nichia has been a worldwide leader in phosphors since the 1960s, including a longstanding relationship with GE also dating back to the ‘60s. Nichia’s phosphor expertise, coupled with its invention of the high brightness blue LED and white LED, has helped shape Nichia’s current status as the world’s largest and highest quality LED manufacturer. Nichia began working with Current on general illumination PFS in 2011 and has been Current’s supplier of this groundbreaking technology since its launch in 2015. This history made Nichia an obvious first choice for expanding accessibility of TriGain®.  

“We are thrilled that Nichia, who has been a long-time strategic partner of ours, will be the first to license our TriGain technology,” said Melissa Wesorick, Chief Marketing Officer at Current. “The move will bring TriGain® technology to more corners of the market and enable improved commercial lighting products.” “For several years Nichia has put an increased effort into overall quality of light. The market is now demanding more from SSL, beyond simply LPW or CRI alone. We are very excited to have the license to supply PFS LEDs to the global general illumination market. This technology will help us improve overall quality of light by delivering a high color preference without sacrificing efficiency,” said Hideki Kaneguchi, Executive General Manager of Nichia’s Lighting business.

Current’s work on PFS began over a decade ago to develop this technology into a market bellwether solution for LED products to achieve a high color rendering and high saturated red output without sacrifice to luminous efficacy. In 2015, Current began offering TriGain® technology in select indoor products, enabling those solutions to operate with industry-leading CRI, R9 and LPW. 

TriGain® technology changes everything.

Current has developed a narrow-band red phosphor that increases both CRI and R9, while improving LED and system efficacy significantly versus other LED products or systems on the market. By making patented and proprietary technological improvements to phosphor synthesis, TriGain® technology is an industry-leading phosphor with premium performance lighting systems for retail and commercial applications. We are doing so without the design complexities of other technologies and with no changes to the luminaire structure of our systems.