Recently, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), backed by Taiwan industrial technology development organization, has developed a new A19 LED bulb with unorthodox design.

The new bulb is named as “Light & Light” bulbs for being lighter and brighter, with it also capable of mood enhancement when equipped with RGB (red-green-blue) packages.

Adopting typical LED backlight packages instead of high-power packages, the new bulb has low-power, small LEDs inside, with packages each containing 150 to 170 8-by-12 mil chips rated at 40-60 milli-watts.

The packages are mounted on flexible printed circuit boards, which are mounted on the outer surface of bulb casing—a clear departure from the conventional approach stressing high-power packages, which are rated at least 1W, installed inside bulb casing, which are of thermal-conductive plastic developed by ITRI’s Material and Chemical Research Laboratories.

According to researchers, mounting the LEDs on the outer bulb surface gives up only 5% of light, merely one fourth the amount compared to conventional design, but enables the bulb to emit light evenly over a wide angle of 330 degrees. The thermal-conductive bulb casing with 3-5W/mK capacity eliminates the need for heavy metal heat sinks, which are crucial to high power LEDs.

The working prototypes of 10W warm white bulb weighs less than 100 grams, only half that of conventional LED bulbs, but gives off 800 lumens or that of a typical 60W incandescent bulb. Also, it is reportedly the world’s first all-plastic LED bulb with 330-degree light angle, while surface-mounted LEDs enables direct radiative, convective cooling into the ambience to ensure longevity.

What’s more, the standard LED backlight package and heat-sink-free design substantially reduce cost. “It costs barely US$5 each, which means LED replacements for 60W incandescent bulbs will be a retail reality soon at less than US$10. Currently, 60W incandescent LED replacements are available at a median US$35.40 apiece worldwide, with the lowest US$17.3 available in South Korea. We believe our LED bulb with such low cost will be a game changer,” touts W.Y. Yeh, R&D Director of Optoelectronics Device & System Application Division of Electronics and Optoelectronics Laboratories.

The ITRI has expected Taiwan’s LED-lighting manufacturers would launch the first batches of the unique bulbs in the middle of this year, and center on Japan market, where ITRI’s Industrial Economics & Knowledge Center estimates consumption of LED bulbs will outstrip that of incandescent bulbs for the first time in 2012 with projected volume of 70-80 million units.