Light-emitting diode light-emitting diode (U.S. Patent US3293513), the first practical LED. Immediately after filing the patent, Texas Instruments (TI) began a project to manufacture infrared diodes. In October 1962, TI announced the first commercial LED product (the SNX-100), which employed a pure GaAs crystal to emit a 890 nm light output. In October 1963, TI announced the first commercial hemispherical LED, the SNX-110. The first visible-spectrum (red) LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak, Jr. while working at General Electric. Holonyak first reported his LED in the journal "Applied Physics Letters" on December 1, 1962. M. George Craford, a former graduate
Light-emitting diode developed a white LED with luminous efficacy of 150 lm/W at a forward current of 20 mA. Cree's XLamp XM-L LEDs, commercially available in 2011, produce 100 lm/W at their full power of 10 W, and up to 160 lm/W at around 2 W input power. In 2012, Cree announced a white LED giving 254 lm/W, and 303 lm/W in March 2014. Practical general lighting needs high-power LEDs, of one watt or more. Typical operating currents for such devices begin at 350 mA. These efficiencies are for the light-emitting diode only, held at low temperature in a lab. Since LEDs