LED lighting industry is booming, competing in the global market (middle) (Figure)


Connected: LED lighting industry is booming, competing in the global market (Part 1)


For example, the small-sized reflective LED bulbs launched in 2008 have an overall luminous efficiency of only 68 lm/W (white light), while Toshiba Lighting Technologies' new LED bulbs introduced in 2009 have an overall luminous efficiency of 81.9 lm/W (see 4202). Billion yen table 1). In other words, in just one year, the luminous efficiency of LED lighting fixtures has increased by 20%. If we continue to move forward at this speed, then from 2011 to 2012, the overall luminous efficiency of LED products will be able to exceed 100lm/W.

On the other hand, the price of LEDs is also falling sharply. In some cases, the overall cost of LED lighting (lighting fixtures plus electricity bills) has outperformed fluorescent lighting solutions. For LED bulbs with a brightness equivalent to 60W, the total cost of the 40,000-hour life cycle is about 10,000 yen; the same is 40,000 hours of lighting. When using incandescent lamps, since the life of each bulb is only 1000 hours, the total cost will be More than 50,000 yen; when using fluorescent bulbs, the cost is about 16,000 yen (see Figure 4). When the cumulative lighting time exceeds 14,000 hours, the overall cost of the LED bulb will be better than that of the fluorescent bulb. It can be seen that LED lighting has a long-term cost advantage.

Figure 4 Overall cost of three lighting fixtures

Technological innovation to create high quality and low price LED
Open the practical door

At present, the price of LED lighting is several times to several times that of traditional lighting, and the threshold is higher for companies and ordinary consumers. The price of these products is high because of the key components of the LED chip/package. In addition, cost control of peripheral circuits such as power supplies and enclosures is also very important.

In terms of brightness, the overall luminous efficiency of LED lamps is still inferior to that of high-frequency fluorescent tubes. LED chip manufacturers are improving their luminous efficiency through innovations in chip and package architecture and materials. Higher luminous efficiency not only reduces packaging costs, but also reduces heat generation. In addition, thermal performance is also a critical factor. If the heat generated in the LED package can be efficiently released, the life of the LED can be extended and the luminous efficiency can be improved.

Simple and cheap

The biggest obstacle to popularizing LED lighting is price. The desire of ordinary consumers and LED bulb wholesalers to cut prices is very strong. Let's take the example of Toshiba Lighting Technology's LED bulbs to analyze how to reduce costs.
The company's products use a die-cast aluminum housing with an LED package mounted on a metal substrate above the housing, on which an acrylic semi-spherical dome is placed to scatter light. The aluminum case contains a resin case for mounting the power supply board (see Figure 5). There are 16 heat sinks outside the aluminum case for dissipating power and the heat generated by the LED package.

Figure 5 Structure of the LED bulb The old and new products do not differ much in the shape of the outer casing, but the new product has no coating, directly adopts the exposed aluminum surface, and the decorative ring is omitted, thereby controlling the cost.

The internal power circuits are quite different. In the original product, a filler was used on the inner side of the power circuit board in the resin case; in the new product, since the circuit board was large, no filler was used. The engineer will thin the surface in contact with the metal substrate to expand the power supply space. In addition, for power boards, the use of phenolic paper instead of glass epoxy can also reduce costs. Of course, a thinner casing also helps to reduce material costs.

Recently, many LED lighting devices have used high-brightness LED packages of more than 1W, and the trend is to reduce the number of LED packages. However, Sifang Xiu Ming, head of the lighting division of the production unit of the discrete module of Roma, said that the company found it cheaper to use a large number of low-brightness LEDs.

At present, the general-purpose LED package has been mass-produced and the price is very cheap. In addition, since a large number of miniature LED chips are used in each package, the average variation in package characteristics can be kept to a minimum. In addition, the company is developing other types of LED lighting, including light bulbs, basic lighting and linear lighting. These products use LEDs with an output of 0.5W and a size of 2mm to 4mm. The number of LEDs in LED bulbs exceeds 70, and the number of LEDs in basic and linear illumination is more than 400.

As high-brightness packages increase, more and more LED lighting designs use metal substrates, and at the same time, it is increasingly difficult to ensure that these substrates have sufficient heat dissipation capabilities. Therefore, the industry has proposed many new substrate structures that can efficiently dissipate heat.


Figure 6 AGSP technology provides excellent thermal performance In order to achieve high thermal conductivity, high-brightness LEDs are usually coated with ceramic and silver paste on AlN (aluminum nitride) substrates, but AlN is more expensive to produce. Although the heat dissipation performance of AGSP is not as good as that of ceramic substrate, its cost performance is better. At present, the Electrochemical Industry Corporation is conducting mass production evaluation, and its goal is to achieve full-scale commercial operation in 2010.

Although the AGSP substrate is relatively inexpensive, there is still a need to further reduce costs because it is currently twice as costly as a metal substrate. The company hopes to improve copper column forming technology and achieve mass production, thereby reducing costs to a level comparable to metal substrates. (To be continued)

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