Breaking News!
QuarkStar Wins DOE L-Prize®
​(Phase 1)
In partnership with Nichia
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.
DOE L-Prize Phase 1 Winner is QuarkStar –
​The Announcement ›
by Jennifer M. Granholm,
​U.S. Secretary of Energy
“I’m super excited to announce the winners of Phase 1 of our L-Prize, our Lighting Prize.
 
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. 
 
We launched the latest round of the competition in May and 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. 
 
After an expert reviewer panel of about 8000 thought leaders (laugh) after they evaluated submissions we chose 4 winning teams…
 
So drum roll….without further ado the winners ... (the first is) Project Tango by QuarkStar of Las Vegas Nevada (clap clap, thumbs up) Bravo!”
- Jennifer M. Granholm, U.S. Secretary of Energy

QuarkStar's L-Prize Winning Concept
with Nichia partnership

Our concept is a networked, white-light-tunable, modular luminaire concept that leverages our team's innovations in optics, LED packages, fixture design, power conversion technology, and a new approach to system networking in lighting – delivering high efficacy, exceptional color qualities & control, and class-defining light distributions.
More information to be released soon.
Reach out directly to us in the meantime. Thank you.
QuarkStar brings Deep Tech to lighting.

One example of the QuarkStar technologies used in the L-Prize design is Edge-X™,
a modular and scalable technology able to sculpt light in space like nothing seen before.

See for yourself

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

Edge-X ​General Technology Overview ›
Discover how QuarkStar's award-winning modular lighting technology Edge-X is able to sculpt light like nothing you've seen before.​
Edge-X Applications & Distributions ​​›
Explore the expanding opportunities of Edge-X with its variety of sculpted distributions and lighting applications.​
​

​More QuarkStar Technologies ›
​Partnering Light with Space

Controls ›
​in Space, Time, and Color
Controlling the distribution of light in Space, desired changes in Time, and Color quality at any given moment; along with unparalleled Color & Lumen Maintenance over product lifetimes. And new approaches to IoT networking & commissioning.
Advanced Light Sources​ ›
Advanced Light Sources encompass technologies allowing large scale spatial control with package size optical devices. 
​
Light Sheets and Filaments ​​›​
Linear arrays and Areal structured sources. Can be 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 ›

For more news and in-depth discussions 

Intellectual Property Portfolio​ ›
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.​