Tackling the challenges in led manufacturing industry with long lasting innovation

With increasing awareness of global climate change and the importance of energy conservation, more and more countries have launched LED lighting projects such as Led street lights replacement and subsidy policies. As a result, even though the growth of the LED market in 2012 was hampered by global economic challenges, overall demand has continued to be on the rise. To help the LED industry tackle the increasing challenges, an in-depth analysis of LED global market opportunities and technology breakthroughs were recently provided at the 2013 LED Market and Outlook seminar held by SEMI Taiwan.

Demand for high-power white LED is now growing at a rapid pace. Yellow and natural light LEDs will both exceed 200 lumen/watt in power rating by 2015 and even surpass 250 lumen/watt by 2020. OEM bulb prices are expected to drop from US$ 23 per 1,000 lumen in 2012 to $10 per 1,000 lumen in 2015 and then down to $5 per 1,000 lumen by 2020. The next few years will therefore see strong growth in the LED lighting market.

In addition to the market challenges, there will also be a number of technological challenges in the future for any Led lights supplier. EPISTAR's Carson Hsieh noted that solving problems with thermal resistance remains the number one priority. The current trend is using Flip-Chip technology to reduce chip-level thermal resistance. Another approach is to improve light emission efficiency. Light emission efficiency is in turn governed by internal quantum efficiency and light extraction efficiency. While improvements have been made in internal quantum efficiency, factors such as material absorption, uneven current distribution, and threshold loss mean that even high internal quantum efficiency within the LED produces relatively little external light. The bottleneck in LED light extraction efficiency must therefore be overcome.