Additive-Manufactured Solid-State Lighting Optics and Luminaire Assemblies

In recent years, lighting manufacturers and developers have moved away from traditional light sources and to light emitting diode (LED)-based solid-state lighting (SSL) technology. In spite of the great potential advantage that LED lighting offers in energy efficiency, the adoption of high-efficiency LED-based lighting has been slowed due to the illumination application requirements of greater light transmission efficiency, more precise light shaping, and reduced customer costs, which are not met with current solutions. Among the primary disadvantages of LED lighting is that that the light emitted by the point sources is often focused and harsh. Current optical diffuser technologies do not distribute LED light efficiently, requiring installation of more dense lamps in spaces, driving up installation, energy consumption, and maintenance costs. To address this opportunity, Vadient Optics LLC (Vadient) has developed a multi-material inkjet-print additive-manufacturing technology platform capable of achieving efficient precise light shaping with spatial and spectral distribution at costs lower than existing approaches. The additive-manufacturing technology addresses multiple elements of an SSL packaging, including optical control, thermal management, reliability, and cost. Large LED diffusing optics—scaled from 1 cm to 1 meter in size—will be designed and fabricated using inkjet-print additive manufacturing. The SSL diffusing optical sheets will be composed of large planar asymmetrical arrays of anamorphic microlens arrays, patterned to shape beams and homogenize the output. It will be shown that the additive-manufactured diffusers have superior spatial and spectral uniformity and throughput efficiency over a wider range of formats (circular, elliptical, and square), areas, and angles than conventional diffusers. The opportunity addressed is to optimize low-glare diffusers for LED solid-state lighting. The technology can also be deployed as primary and secondary optics in LED lighting assemblies. LED lamps are widely adopted across various commercial spaces, such as healthcare, retail, and hospitality, to deliver enhanced illumination capabilities and to offer direction to the end users.