A universal, easy-to-apply light-quality index based on natural light spectrum

resemblance
Jwo-Huei Jou, Kun-Yi Chou, Fu-Chin Yang, Abhishek Agrawal, Sun-Zen Chen, Jing-Ru Tseng, Ching-Chiao Lin,
Po-Wei Chen, Ken-Tsung Wong, and Yun Chi

Citation: Applied Physics Letters 104, 203304 (2014); doi: 10.1063/1.4879635

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4879635
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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 104, 203304 (2014)

A universal, easy-to-apply light-quality index based on natural light spectrum

resemblance
Jwo-Huei Jou,1,a) Kun-Yi Chou,1 Fu-Chin Yang,1 Abhishek Agrawal,1,2 Sun-Zen Chen,3
Jing-Ru Tseng,1 Ching-Chiao Lin,1 Po-Wei Chen,1 Ken-Tsung Wong,4,5 and Yun Chi6
1
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsin-Chu 300, Taiwan
2
Amity Institute of Nanotechnology, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
3
Center For Nanotechnology, Materials Science, and Microsystems, National Tsing Hua University, Hsin-Chu
300, Taiwan
4
Department of Chemistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan
5
Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
6
Department of Chemistry, National Tsing Hua University, Hsin-Chu 300, Taiwan
(Received 1 March 2014; accepted 12 May 2014; published online 23 May 2014)
Light-quality is extremely crucial for any light source to be used for illumination. However, a
proper light-quality index is still missing although numerous electricity-driven lighting measures
have been introduced since past 150 yr. We present in this communication a universal and easy-
to-apply index for quantifying the quality of any given lighting source, which is based on direct
comparison of its lumen spectrum with the natural light counterpart having the same color
temperature. A general principle for creating high quality pseudo-natural light is accordingly
derived. By using organic light-emitting diode technology, for example, daylight-style emission
with a 96% natural light resemblance is obtained as a high number of organic emitters with
diffused colors spanning throughout the entire visible range are employed. The same principle can
be extended to other lighting technology such as light-emitting diode to generate natural light-style
C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4879635]
emission. V

Natural light such as the color-varying daylight from the
sun is most adorable, but can never be kept for illumination.
Many electricity-driven lighting measures, including mercury
lamp, cold-white fluorescent tube, warm-white fluorescent
tube, and light-emitting diode, have instead been invented
since the invention of incandescent bulbs.1 Although these ar-
tificial light sources, except incandescent bulbs, are energy-
efficient as compared to the hydrocarbon-burning lighting
devices, but are often not satisfactory because their emissive
spectra are quite different from those of the diffused and soft
natural lights, or, in short, their light quality is low or in
question.
Furthermore, although there have been extensive efforts
in the development of more proper light quality metrics,27
color rendering index (CRI) along with other current metrics,
like correlated color temperature, color quality scale, and
color modification factor, are still found to be inadequate for
describing the color of light. There, therefore, arises a call
from the Department of Energy in 2013 that, for example, an
appropriate light-quality index be developed before 2020 to
accurately describe the color of light.8
To resolve, we present, in this Letter, a universal and
easy-to-apply index to quantify the light-quality of any given
lighting source. It is based on a direct comparison of the
lumen rather than power spectrum determined for the sample
light with that of the easy-to-access blackbody radiation, an
ideal natural light, at the same color temperature. Since the
blackbody radiation, taken as a reference light for the determi-
nation of the new light-quality index, is readily obtainable
from calculation for any desirable color temperature, it waives
a)
E-mail: jjou@mx.nthu.edu.tw. Tel.: 886-3-5742617.
all the troubles encountered in the calculation of color render-
ing index, for example, as one needs to find over a wide range
of color temperatures a series of representative sunlight spec-
tra as the reference lights, which actually do not exist realisti-
cally or would vary significantly with different time, weather,
latitude, or even air quality. Additionally, the new light-
quality index, namely, spectrum resemblance index, SRI, pre-
sented herein defines the light quality over 0 to 100 scale
where zero represents a poorest light-quality while 100 rates
for highest light-quality. As to the exemplified color rendering
index, a negative value would be obtained for some lighting
sources, e.g., 12 is assigned for the commonly adopted
low pressure sodium street lamp.9 Moreover, also unlike the
prior reported light-quality index, sunlight spectrum resem-
blance (SSR),10 which did not distinguish the very different
luminous contributions made by different colors, this index
weights the contributions of the different colors according to
the photopic function, which quantitatively depicts different
lumens that different lights can contribute from the perspec-
tive of human eyes in well-lit conditions. Since lesser weight
is assigned to lights that are less sensitive to human eyes, a
resulting higher index of this implies a higher luminous effi-
cacy, besides more like a natural light, especially as compar-
ing with the sunlight spectrum resemblance counterpart. This
is because to obtain a high index of sunlight spectrum resem-
blance, a tremendously high amount of photo energy is
required and consequently wasted in generating imperceptible
human-eye regions, i.e., deep-blue and/or deep red-lights.
Figure 1 depicts the extents of resemblance of the current
lighting sources with their corresponding natural light. Taking
the 100 CRI incandescent bulb at 2300 K, for example, it
shows from the perspective of machine detected power

0003-6951/2014/104(20)/203304/5/$30.00 104, 203304-1 C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC

V

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 203304-2 Jou et al.
spectrum a 96% resemblance with the natural light, i.e., the
blackbody-radiation at the same 2300 K. Its similarity percent-
age with natural light is 97 in terms of lumen spectrum resem-
blance. This ultra-high natural light similarity, coupling with
the intrinsically warm-sensation giving chromaticity, may
explain why incandescent bulbs are most widely adopted in
residential illumination.1114 However, they are less frequently
used for work, especially during the daytime, because their
orange-yellow dominant color is drastically different from the
outdoor pure-white daylight, making people hard to adjust
psychologically,1519 or causing depression or lethargy.20
As to fluorescent tubes, they can easily show high or
even very-high CRI and have a large market share, in gen-
eral, lighting.21,22 Unfortunately, their discontinuous and
spiking emission nature depreciate them from the natural
lights, which in turn lead to a comparatively low SR. This
FIG. 1. Natural light resemblance comparison of current lighting sources
from the perspectives of machine-detected power spectrum and human-eyes
sensible lumen spectrum. To reflect the light-quality for lighting, the spec-
trum of the lighting source is suggested to compare directly with the natural
light from the perspective of human eyes sensitivity to light. Amongst, the
incandescent bulb is the only electricity-driven lighting source showing very
high similarity with natural light either from machine or human eyes per-
spective. The extremely high natural light resemblance however cannot pre-
vent incandescent bulbs from being phased out due to its energy-wasting
nature arising from excessive emission in the deep-red or even infrared
region. Hence, the key to developing a quality pseudo-natural light with
energy-saving character is to maximize the spectral similarity at wave-
lengths with high human eyes sensitivity, and meanwhile minimize the
emissions in the deep-red and deep-blue regions. These explain why some
lighting sources show poor match with natural light from power spectrum
perspective, but good match from lumen spectrum perspective and are com-
paratively energy-saving, for wasting little or no energy in generating emis-
sion in the invisible or visible-less parts.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 203304 (2014)
explains why the SR remains only 78 for the fluorescent tube
that possess CRI as high as 98 (Figure 1) explicating why
CRI is not an appropriate light-quality index.
In contrary, the popular street-light, high pressure so-
dium lamp,11,23 shows a high natural light similarity, which is
61 in SR, but drops down to only 22 if quantified in terms of
CRI. Again, while light sources with a high CRI do not war-
rant any high natural light resemblance, the typically claimed
low-CRI counterparts do not truly mean poor in light-quality.
Amongst, the incandescent bulb is so far the only
electricity-driven lighting source showing very high similarity
with the natural light either from machine or human eyes per-
spective. It is because of its smooth and continuous emissive
nature which falls close to blackbody-radiation. However, the
near complete power-spectrum match with natural light can-
not prevent incandescent bulbs from being phased out due to
very low luminous efficiency, i.e., between 1.9% and 2.6%.24
The poor luminous performance of incandescent bulbs arises
mainly from the excessive emission of invisible infrared and
least-visible deep-red lights. In order to develop a quality
pseudo-natural light with energy-saving character, one needs
to maximize the spectral similarity at wavelengths which are
more sensitive to human eyes, and meanwhile minimizing
those in or beyond the deep-red and/or deep-blue regions.
This explains why fluorescent tubes and high pressure sodium
lamps are comparatively energy-saving.25,26
As to the state-of-art solid state lighting technology,
light emitting diode (LED) is capable of reaching very high
spectral similarity with natural light. Taking the 97 CRI,
white LED studied, for example, exhibits a 94 SR (Figure 1).
Although the emission of typical LED lamps is very sharp in
the blue light region, the employment of one or two rela-
tively broad and diffused emission giving phosphor(s)2729
that with emission peaking at around the highest photopic
plateau has markedly enhanced its natural light similarity.
Taking another 94 CRI, warm-white LED, for example, the
SR is further increased to 96 as the narrow-band red LED is
replaced by a broad-band red phosphor.
As to another solid state lighting technology, organic
light emitting diode (OLED) can closely mimic almost any
natural light with any desirable color. It is because organic
electro-luminescent materials can emit any color throughout
the entire visible region, and their spectra are broad and dif-
fused. As a result, full-spectrum pseudo-natural lights with
different daylight colors can be synthesized with the
employment of a high number of OLED emitters. By using
six organic emitters with colors varying from deep-red to
deep-blue, for example, we can generate dawn-style, sunny-
day-style, and dusk-hue-style emissions with a very high
spectrum resemblance of 96, 96, and 92, respectively.
The above lumen based SR, or SRI, is defined as
following:
Lk; Tdk
SRI  100%; (1)
LBR k; Tdk
where L is the luminance of the studied light source overlap-
ping with that of its corresponding blackbody-radiation, LBR,
 203304-3 Jou et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 203304 (2014)

FIG. 2. Exemplifications of the spectra

of three natural lights, i.e., sunlight at
dawn, noon, and dusk, from machine
and human eyes perspectives; where
the luminance or lumen spectra (c) are
obtained by weighting the machine-
detected power spectra (a) with the lu-
minosity or photopic function3032 (b).

at a given wavelength, k, at the same color temperature, T.
As shown in Figure 2, the luminance spectrum, L(k,T), can
be obtained by convoluting the power spectrum, I(k,T), with
the luminosity function, or photopic function if under well-
lit condition, V(k).3032 Details regarding the calculation can
be referred in Ref. 33.
Figure 3 demonstrates the effects of band-numbers on
natural light similarity, SR, for the lighting sources based
on narrow-band LEDs and broad-band OLEDs. As seen, the
increase of the applied band-numbers may help improve the
similarity, but only to a very limited degree, if LEDs with
mono-disperse emission are employed. Specifically, the

FIG. 3. Effects of band-number on nat-

ural light similarity for the lighting
sources based on narrow-band LEDs
and broad-band OLEDs. Taking a
white natural light with a color temper-
ature of 5800 K, for example, it takes
OLED only 4 bands to generate a
pseudo-natural white light with a
greater than 95% natural light similar-
ity. In contrary, using 6 narrow-band
LEDs can only obtain an 83% similar-
ity, explaining why broad-band phos-
phors are inevitably adopted in LEDs
for lighting purpose.

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 203304-4 Jou et al.
FIG. 4. Effects of the band-number of composing emitters on the light-
quality, in terms of natural light SRI, and the corresponding efficacy-limit
for the white light at 5800 K composing of broad-band OLEDs (in red circle)
and narrow-band LEDs (in blue square). Although there is a trade-off
between the light quality and efficacy, relatively high device efficiency is
still achievable for OLED with a nearly perfect natural light-style emission.
similarity is increased from 58 to 83 as the band-numbers
applied are increased from 2 to 6. This explains why phos-
phors must be incorporated in LED lamps to improve their
light quality or to generate emission like that of natural
light. Taking the latest full-spectrum white LEDs,
that based on some customized phosphor blends,34 for
example, only three broad-and-diffused emissive bands are
required to mimic natural light character with an SR as high
as 89.
In contrast, due to the intrinsic broadband nature of
OLEDs their natural light similarity can be markedly
enhanced from 88 to 96 as the band-numbers are increased
from 2 to 4. As the band numbers are increased to 6, the re-
semblance is further increased to 98. These results conclude
that quality pseudo-natural lights for lighting can be generated
by utilizing a high number of natural light complementary or-
ganic emitters. The exemption from using the very costly
phosphors may further enable OLED to become a competitive
technology, in general, illumination in the near future.
Figure 4 shows the effects of band-number of the com-
posing emitters on the resultant natural light SRI, with respect
to the corresponding efficacy limit for the white light at
5800 K based on broad-band OLEDs and narrow-band LEDs.
These simulation results reveal the light quality, in terms of
SRI, to first increase and the efficacy-limit to decrease as the
band-number is increased from 2 to 4 for both OLED and
LED. That is simply because the 2-bands devices do not need
either the deep-blue or deep-red component to form a pure-
white light. Whilst, to form the 4-band pure white light, the
deep-blue, and deep-red emitters are included. The inclusion
of these two emitters that are relatively low in efficacy by na-
ture would hence lead to a comparatively low device efficacy.
However, as the band-number is further increased to 6, both
the SRI and efficacy-limit are increased. That is because the
additional two emitters exhibit an inherent efficacy much
higher than the deep-blue and deep-red counterparts. The
6-bands white LED shows an extremely high efficacy-limit
(391 lm/W), but with a fairly high SRI (83). In contrary, the
6-bands OLED counterpart shows a 98 SRI an efficacy-limit
of 290 lm/W. Overall speaking, there is a trade-off between
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 203304 (2014)
the light quality and efficacy. Nevertheless, decent device ef-
ficiency can still be obtained for OLED with a nearly perfect
nature light-style emission.
To conclude, a universal and easy-to-apply index are
developed for quantifying the light-quality of any given light
source to be used for lighting purpose. The reason why the
light-quality index is easy to apply is because it is based on a
straightforward, direct comparison of the resulting lumen
spectrum with the natural light counterpart having the same
color temperature. The reason why it is universal is
because it takes the theoretically computable blackbody radi-
ation as the reference light with no color temperature limit,
while in CRI, for example, no standard sunlight spectra can
be obtained as reference over a wide range of color tempera-
ture since sunlight spectrum varies with time, weather, lati-
tude, and/or air quality. A general principle for creating high
quality pseudo-natural light with energy-saving character is
accordingly derived. As demonstrated, the principle can be
applied to at least LED and OLED lighting technologies to
fabricate natural light-style light sources with high light-
quality.
This work was financially supported by Taiwan
National Science Council and Ministry of Economic Affairs
through Grant Nos. MEA 101-EC-17-A-07-S1-181, NSC
101-3113-E-007-001, and NSC 100-2119-M-007-011-MY3.
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26
I. Lewin and L. Fies, developed from a Paper Delivered to the 1999 (k, T) is the luminance spectrum of the blackbody-radiation, and L (k, T) is
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28
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29
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30
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31
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2
1
,
(2005). k5 hc
ekkT 1
32
G. Wald, Science 101, 653658 (1945). where h is the Planck constant, c is the speed of light in vacuum, k is the
33
The SR of a given light source is calculated wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation, k is the Boltzmann constant,
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Lk; Tdk
and it is defined as following: SR  100% where LBR 34
F. Rahman, Opt. Photonics News 24, 2632 (2013).
LBR k; Tdk

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