NN-Labs Licenses Technology to Company Making High-Quality, Energy-Efficient Lighting

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Highly efficient, high-quality lights featuring technology developed at the University of Arkansas was on display at the Lightfair International Trade Show in Las Vegas May 12-14.

“You can now tune your lighting quality without sacrificing efficiency,” said Suresh Sunderrajan, president of NNCrystal US Corp., a spinoff of NN-Labs LLC, which created the lighting technology. NN-Labs LLC has just signed a lease with the Enterprise Center at the Arkansas Research and Technology Park.

In this case, the nanocrystals will power solid-state lighting used commercially. Lighting consumes more than 20 percent of the energy used worldwide, and most current light sources are inefficient: An incandescent light bulb is about 1-3 percent efficient, while fluorescent light bulbs are about 20 percent efficient. In contrast, solid-state lighting, also known as LED lighting, can be up to 50 percent energy-efficient. Furthermore, this LED lighting lasts much longer than standard bulbs: Incandescent bulbs last about six months, fluorescent bulbs anywhere from a few months to three years, and LED lighting can last up to 10 years.

“Imagine a hotel lobby in Las Vegas. There, the cost of a light is trivial compared to the cost of replacing those lights,” Sunderrajan said.

Despite their increased efficiency, LEDs have proved a challenge, because they are monochromatic — they do not emit white light, which is a combination of all types of light. Instead, they can only emit colors like red, blue and yellow. LEDs are made to produce white light by combining a blue LED with a yellow phosphor, a substance that glows when exposed to electrons. The combination of blue and yellow makes white. The quality of white light produced this way is poor, however, with relatively poor color rendering ability.

“This can cause a blue jacket to look gray, for instance,” Sunderrajan said. High-quality light mimics sunlight, the human’s natural standard, and the light from LEDs is not considered to be of high quality unless other colors beyond blue and yellow are added, which cuts back on the light’s overall efficiency – the light may look better, but the amount of light emitted is lower for the same amount of energy.

“We fix that problem with our technology,” Sunderrajan said.

NNCrystal has created a technology called Qshift Coral, which uses quantum dots to precisely control color. They can be used to augment the color of light emitted by LEDs to produce high-quality white light without sacrificing efficiency. Since these quantum dots are tunable – the optical properties can be controlled to change the color of light they emit – the lights can be “tuned” to create almost any other color or color combination on the spectrum.

The second technology being introduced by NNCrystal, Qshift Lucid, features nanoparticles that are color-free in ambient lighting and can be combined with different LED lights, yet will look clear like traditional lights when turned off. This technology can be used to build all of the colors in the sun’s spectrum.

“It’s just like having the sun indoors,” Sunderrajan said.

The technology was originally developed at the University of Arkansas by Xiaogang Peng, the former Scharlau Professor of Chemistry. Peng’s technology formed the basis of NN-Labs LLC. The company produces high performance nanocrystals in solution. They create nanocrystals of different sizes, which have different optical properties, some of which can be used in lighting displays, solar cells and biomedical applications.

NNCrystal US Corp., a Fayetteville-based spinoff of NN-Labs, developed the new lighting technology that was unveiled to the commercial lighting industry at the Lightfair International 2010 trade show. Renaissance Lighting has adopted the new lighting technology and will be displaying it at the trade show.

About NN-Labs LLC

NN-Labs LLC is a leading developer of advanced functional materials including semiconductor, noble metal and magnetic metal oxide nanocrystals. NN-Labs’ patent-protected products have offered superior performance, highest quality and versatility for demanding research and teaching applications since 2003. NN-Labs is currently pursuing product-system commercialization opportunities in solid-state lasers and life sciences. Additional information can be found at www.nn-labs.com.

About NNCrystal US Corp.

Arkansas-based NNCrystal US Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hangzhou Najing Technology Ltd. and an exclusive licensee of advanced materials synthesis technology from NN-Labs LLC. NNCrystal is the owner of two patented and trademarked technology platforms for solid-state lighting applications — Qshift Lucid and Qshift Coral. NNCrystal is focused on leveraging its advanced materials capabilities to deliver breakthrough, differentiated and sustainable solutions to the global lighting industry. For more information, visit http://www.nncrystal.com.