Abstract
The 10 key on-going technologies to make the LEDs to generate more light than
heat and finally take the competitive lead in lighting markets.
A new Yole Développement / EPIC report
Breaking the Profit-barrier with Ultra-High Brightness LEDs
LED component volumes have been driven mainly by mobile phone sales recently,
showing an incredible annual compound growth rate of more than +45% per year.
Due to the strong pressure on component prices, revenue growth has been
moderate: only +8% over the last 2 years.
"It is now clear that LED market needs to expand into new and profitable
sectors with higher margins. We believe that this growth will come from 3
additional application areas: automotive lighting, architectural lighting and
general illumination, in addition to the LCD backlighting market." says
Philippe Roussel senior analyst at Yole Développement, in charge of
Compound Semiconductor activity.
To capture the profits in these application sectors, significant improvements
are needed in LED performance, especially in $/lumen and in Lumens/Watt at
full power. New approaches manufacturing technologies are required at all
levels: materials, design, front-end, back-end and packaging, in order to
profit from the potential of Ultra-High Brightness LED: UHB-LEDs.
More power and efficiency leads to higher margins and profits
EPIC Secretary General Tom Pearsall points-out: "Recent announcements from LED
manufacturers show very impressive results on the lm/W efficiency parameter.
(150 lm/W has been proved in laboratory), but only at low-current (<20mA)
low-power operation.
The difficulty in obtaining both high power and high efficiency simultaneously
underscores the immediate need for dramatic improvements in manufacturing
technologies. Today, no more than 70 lm/W has been demonstrated with
high-power LEDs (> 1 Watt). In other words, LEDs still lag behind the
performance of fluorescent lamps for general lighting applications.
Today high power LED are generating on the average 75% heat versus only 25%
light. Several parameters have to be dramatically improved like:
- Internal Quantum Efficiency
- Electrical losses
- Extraction efficiency
- Phosphor conversion and optics quality
This report describes 10 key manufacturing technologies, in use or under
investigation that considerably improved the LED optical output power among:
- New substrate materials
- Laser Lift-Off
- Temporary Bonding
- Transparent top contacts
- Binning
- Surface Texturing
- Phosphor composition and deposition
- …
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