Shuji Nakamura's Soraa Makes LEDs 10 Times Brighter

Soraa is betting that a super-efficient LED can more than make up for its greater cost to shake up the lighting industry.

Soraa has already locked up $100 million in funding to commercialize a new type of LED bulb that’s 10 times as bright as conventional LEDs of the same wattage. This advantage may make it the pioneer of a whole new generation of more durable, longer-lasting and more energy-efficient LED lighting.

Fremont-based Soraa is set to begin shipping a 12-watt LED bulb as bright as a 50-watt halogen bulb by the end of March.

Unlike other LEDs made by growing a thin layer of gallium nitride crystals over a substrate of sapphire, silicon carbide or silicon, Soraa’s LEDs use the gallium nitride as the substrate. This increases the cost but reduces by a factor of 1,000 the dislocations of the light produced by the difference between the crystal structures of the substrate and the gallium nitride layer. The result is efficiency gains that can push 10 times as much light through a given area of LED material.

The cost of the a gallium nitride substrate is about 7 to 70 times as great as that of conventional silicon or sapphire substrates, but the wafer cost is only a tiny percentage of the total cost of making Soraa’s light. Soraa has already begun discovering ways to save on production of its novel LEDs. The finished product is so energy efficient that a user will recoup the $25 cost of a Soraa lamp in under a year on energy savings.

“We have a simple, highly dense light source that reduces system design, making it the most cost-effective light, period,” said CEO Eric Kim.

Soraa bulbs also have an edge in structural integrity and, consequently, durability. While it takes many conventional LEDs to produce a 50-watt-equivalent light bulb, a single Soraa LED matches that output.

Soraa’s new LED technology is the brainchild of co-founder Shuji Nakamura who invented and perfected the original LED in the 1990s. After a long, tough legal battle against his former employer Nichia Corp., Nakamura won a $189.8 million judgment but later took an $8 million settlement to end the company’s appeals.

Eric Kim, the other co-founder and Soraa CEO, had made a name for himself as a high-level executive at both Intel and Samsung Electronics. He will draw on his big-firm experience to help Soraa compete against lighting industry giants like Philips Electronics NV and Cree as well as other innovative LED start-ups like Bridgelux, Switch Bulb and Intematix.