Breaking News
​
​QuarkStar Profiled in LEDs Magazine 
QuarkStar Wins DOE L-Prize®
​(Phase 1)
In partnership with Nichia
DOE L-Prize Phase 1 Winner is QuarkStar – The Announcement
by Jennifer M. Granholm,
​U.S. Secretary of Energy
QuarkStar is thrilled to be a WINNER of DOE’s L-Prize (Phase 1), part of a multi-million-dollar competition to energize U.S. commercial lighting innovation.
A decade ago DOE awarded our very first L-Prize to a technology you might have heard about a little bit – an LED replacement for the everyday lightbulb... the purpose was to raise the bar for lighting efficiency, quality, connectivity, and environmental footprint. And this time we are really targeting transformational innovations to light commercial buildings. ​
―Jennifer M. Granholm, U.S. Secretary of Energy
“Currently available technologies and systems may excel in one performance area, but often at the expense of others … a key innovation of this L-Prize is that a winning system must demonstrate exceptional achievement in all areas.” 

QuarkStar's L-Prize Winning Submission with Nichia partnership
To make these ambitions real, the Project Tango team of QuarkStar and Nichia made use of:
For more information see our press release.
And feel free to reach out directly to us. Thank you.

The Ultimate Debut for a New Lighting Technology

Lighting the galleries of the largest museum project in North America › 

QuarkStar Lights Up a Galaxy of Art:  QuarkStar is the primary lighting supplier ​for the centerpiece building of the largest museum project in North America, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Rich and Nancy Kinder Building.
"Subtle LED lighting that achieves remarkably consistent illumination"
Wall Street Journal
Photo credits - Richard Barnes
"QuarkStar’s revolutionary technology bridges the natural and artificial"
"QuarkStar’s Edge-X technology delivers something previously never before seen in the lighting world: evenly distributed sheets of light easily spanning 16-ft gallery walls and daylight matching color-tuning from a single row of LEDs"
LD+A Issue May 2021

Edge-X ›
A QuarkStar Lighting Technology

​More QuarkStar Technologies ›
​Partnering Light with Space

Controls ›
​in Space, Time, and Color
  • New ways to control light in Space, Time, & Color.
  • Unparalleled Color & Lumen Maintenance over product lifetimes.
  • New approaches to IoT Networking & Self-Commissioning.
Advanced Light Sources​ ›
Advanced Light Sources are Fixtures in a Package – offering large scale spatial control from package-sized sources. ​
Light Sheets and Filaments ​​›​
Linear arrays and Planar sources coupled to sophisticated optics.

QuarkStar Technologies

Other Awards and Accolades
 One of the Best Innovations of Light+Building
Winner in ​DOE
NGL Competition 
Emerging Technology
One of the 20 Hottest Lighting Companies ​in the World
Winner in ​DOE
NGL Competition 
Asymmetric Lighting
 One of Top 10 Products of LightFair International

News ›

Platinum Award Winner – QuarkStar

A New International Award Celebrating and Rewarding Innovation 

QuarkStar was independently nominated for this new international award based on QuarkStar's premier role in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's newly completed centerpiece building.  
​
To learn more about this innovative project and see an independent review of the QuarkStar technology

Read more ›

​Houston museum uses QuarkStar optics to uniformly light art galleries

Fixtures that hide within the building architecture and spectral tuning bring natural light effects into the exhibit spaces in the new Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 

The relatively diminutive optical element can spread LED light uniformly over large areas such as walls while allowing the solid-state lighting (SSL) fixture to be essentially hidden in a room’s architectural features or recessed into the ceiling. 
 
Meanwhile, a multi-channel LED light engine enables the museum lighting to match the abundant natural light that the building design draws into the public spaces and galleries.
​
Read more ›

Ground-breaking optics debut in £330 million art gallery LUX Review, UK

INNOVATIVE lighting optics developed by technologists in the US are being used for the first time in new £330 million (US$450 million) art gallery.

QuarkStar’s radical Edge-X technology has been specified by top lighting design practice L’Observatoire for the newly opened Kinder Building, centrepiece of a massive expansion to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. 
 
The expansion was the largest fine art gallery project in North America in 2020, designed by US ‘starchitect’ Steven Holl.​

Read more ›

Technological breakthroughs: QuarkStar is 'completely changing the conceptual approach to lighting' 
LUX, La Revue de L'eclairage (LUX, The Review of Lighting), Paris

​The French publication Lux highlights QuarkStar's Edge-X technology as a completely new approach. 

"Holder of numerous patents, winner of many awards, the American start-up QuarkStar has completely rethought LED lighting in order to surpass current performances at all levels."

Read more ›

"Taking Optics-Based Beam Distribution to a Whole New Level"

from ​LEDs Magazine:
"At the end of the day, optics in SSL applications serve the primary task of controlling beam distribution. [QuarkStar] takes that task to a new level ...

"The company [QuarkStar] has developed some compelling demonstration optics, especially Edge-X for general illumination applications ... "

Read more ›

QuarkStar reinvents the downlight,
finessing the limitations of glare

Winner of the Light+Building Lux Innovation Award, this is being called
the first fundamental innovation in downlights in their 75 year history.

This is a brand new downlight concept that makes use of the versatility and unprecedent performance capabilities of QuarkStar's Edge-X technology. It has been further developed to significantly decrease the problems of glare, ubiquitous in traditional downlight designs. The first commercial products have an expected 2022 release.

Watch presentation at Strategies in Light ›​
Presentation slides ›

"Sylvania licenses radical lens tech from US start-up"

[Sylvania] has signed a deal to get access to the radical Edge-X technology from innovative US start-up QuarkStar.

It’s understood the company will initially use the ‘light shaping’ lens development in its downlight and linear lighting ranges under the Concord brand.
 
The Edge-X optics essentially guide the output from LEDs and sculpt the distribution of light in a space. One of the benefits to clients is that fewer luminaires are needed in a space to get the same effect as traditional optics.

Read more ›

Focus shifts from lumens to color
QuarkStar CTO's solution of the previously unsolved major problem of color shift prediction forms basis of new industry standard TM-35

LEDS Magazine
Predicting Chromaticity Shift in LEDs and SSL Products

" [The model] has the potential to change how the solid-state lighting (SSL) industry utilizes test and measurement guidance, and effectively end the notion that the lumen is the only light characteristic that matters with regard to LED lifetime performance."
  
​Carrie Meadows interviews  Dr. Eric Bretschneider, 
CTO QuarkStar & Chair of the IES Solid-State Lighting Subcommittee 
​
Read more ›

QuarkStar presents two keynote talks at the 20th Anniversary  Strategies in Light

As a team composed of industry experts with decades of collective experience in the SSL industry as well as Silicon Valley entrepreneurial know-how, QuarkStar is uniquely positioned to provide perspectives on the development of the LED lighting industry and where its future is leading.

20 Years of Strategies in Light: Reflections on the Evolution of the LED Industry
presented by Dr. Robert Steele, QuarkStar's chief market analyst and founder and co-chair of Strategies in Light

​​"From Black Death to White Light": The LED Revolution That Almost Didn't Happen
presented by Dr. Eric Bretschneider, QuarkStar CTO
​Chair of the IES Solid-State Lighting Subcommittee

​​Read more ›

More News and In-depth Discussions › 

Intellectual Property Portfolio​ ›
QuarkStar:
​A Universe of Innovation
500+ patents filed (US, EU, CN, JP)
250+ patents granted
(with new patents every month)
Current applications
       ●  Industrial
       ●  Commercial
       ●  Horticulture
       ●  Automotive
       ●  LiFi & IoT
       ●  LED filament bulbs
Our IP portfolio of over 500 patent applications, with >50% already granted, provides our partners with protected technologies that overcome current limitations of solid-state lighting.​