MARKET ANALYSIS | TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

The story of a new light source

Since its humble origins as a red indicator on electronic goods, the LED has come a long way and the latest white-light versions are now surpassing the efciency of uorescent lamps.

Robert V. Steele
Optoelectronic Programs, Strategies Unlimited, 201 San Antonio Circle, Suite 205, Mountain View, California 94040, USA. e-mail: Rsteele@strategies-u.com

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101 Cost per lumen (US dollars) or Flux per package (lumens)

he first commercial visible LEDs were developed in 1968, and since then the technology has undergone a series of dramatic leaps in performance and capability. For the first 25 years following LED commercialization, the compound semiconductor materials (primarily GaP and GaAsP) used to fabricate LEDs suffered from poor light-generation efficiency, which limited LEDs to low light applications such as indicator lamps and alphanumeric displays. Moreover, their emission colours were restricted to yellowgreen, orange and red. This all started to change in the early to mid 1990s when a new generation of LED materials was developed, which allowed the creation of high-brightness devices (HBLEDs) that operated across the entire visible spectrum, including blue and white devices. This new technology, based on InGaAlP and InGaN compound semiconductors, quickly opened up large new markets for LEDs, and between 1995 and 2005 the HB-LED market grew at a remarkable average annual rate of 42%. Most of this market growth was driven by the adoption of HB-LEDs in three large application areas: signalling (traffic signals, automobile brake lights); displays (outdoor full-colour video screens, single-colour variable-message signs); and backlighting (automobile instrument panels, mobile-phone LCD displays and keypads). In 2005, the HB-LED market had grown to $3.9 billion. As the technology improves still further, the performance of HB-LEDs continues to rise while prices decline. The powerful combination of these two factors means that makers of HB-LEDs are now preparing to tackle their next big market opportunity the general illumination market.

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Figure 1 Since the invention of the red LED in the late 1960s, every 10 years the light output per device has increased by a factor of 20 while the cost per lumen has fallen by a factor of 10. This trend is known as Haitzs Law after Roland Haitz, the scientist from Agilent Technologies who rst analysed this behaviour. Open symbols denote cost per lumen (measured in US dollars) and closed symbols denote ux per package (measured in lumens).

AN END TO THE LIGHT BULB

Since about 2000, a fledgling LED lighting market has emerged. Early illumination

applications have included niche markets such as architectural lighting, channel-letter signs (where the letters are individually illuminated), machine vision (automated image-recognition equipment used in manufacturing) flashlights, accent and decorative lighting, and landscape lights. Many of these applications have taken advantage of the very high brightness and efficiencies available from coloured LEDs (red, green and blue) relative to competing light sources such as filtered incandescent lamps and neon. But more recently, white LEDs have begun to enter applications such as retail display lighting and ultimately could be used in the home. Clearly, for white LEDs to be adopted in lighting applications in preference to incandescent bulbs or fluorescent lamps, they must provide some significant advantages especially as they are more expensive to purchase. Fortunately, LED technology does offer a long list of benefits for lighting such as: high-energy

efficiency (now up to 70 lm W1); long lifetime (tens of thousands of hours); design flexibility; directional light; robustness; dimming capability without colour shift; absence of regulated toxic substances (for example, mercury); absence of heat or UV in light beam; and low-voltage d.c. operation. Today, the two main disadvantages that white LEDs still need to overcome to achieve wide-scale adoption in the general lighting market are their much higher cost compared with conventional light sources, and their low light output per emitter. Both of these problems are being vigorously addressed by the LED industry, and substantial progress is being made. Historically, the price of light generated by LEDs (measured in US dollars per lumen of light output) has declined by a factor of 10 per decade, whereas the light output from a single device has increased by a factor of 20 per decade. This trend is called Haitzs Law
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MARKET ANALYSIS | TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Table 1 Performance comparison of white leds with other light sources. The efficacy of LEDs is now on a par with fluorescent sources but boasts a much longer lifespan. Source High-power white LEDs* Halogen capsule lamp, 2 pin Incandescent, screw base Fluorescent T12, 48 inch, 2 pin Compact fluorescent, screw base Light output (lm) 60135 950 890 2,800 900 Electrical input (W) 1.22.6 50 60 32 15 Luminous efficacy (lm W1) 5070 19 14.8 87.5 60 Lifetime (h) 50,000 2,000 1,000 20,000 10,000

EMERGING LIGHTING MARKETS

*Best white LEDs available at present on a commercial basis, typical performance.

(see Fig. 1) and can be considered as an analogy of Moores Law, which charts the speed increase and size decrease of silicon microelectronics. In fact, since 2002, the lumen output of the best commercial white LEDs has increased by a factor of six, and the cost per lumen has decreased by a factor of seven. Nevertheless, yet more progress is required before LEDs can effectively penetrate the large-scale general illumination market.
UNPRECEDENTED EFFICIENCY

One of the most exciting developments in white-LED technology has been the rapid recent growth in efficiency, or more accurately, luminous efficacy, which is measured in lumens per watt. White LED efficacy long ago surpassed that of the highest efficacy incandescent lamps (17 lm W1). The next major challenge has been to match the efficacy of compact fluorescent lamps (around 60 lm W1) and linear fluorescent lamps (around 80 lm W1). In 2006, both of

those benchmarks were exceeded by the best commercially available white LEDs. Further improvements in efficacy are expected so that 100 lm W1 should be exceeded within the next two years, and industry roadmaps project that white-LED efficacies will reach 150 lm W1 after 2010. Table 1 compares typical performance parameters of some of the best white LEDs available at present with conventional light sources. As shown in Table 1, the best white LEDs now exceed the performance of conventional light sources in terms of both efficacy and lifetime with the exception of the very-high efficiency linear fluorescent lamp. Although white LEDs are much more expensive to purchase than competing light sources, their higher efficiency and much longer lifetimes mean that they can be less expensive over all. This lower lifecycle cost could be particularly appealing in regions in which electricity prices are high, such as California and Europe, and in situations where replacing blown bulbs is inconvenient and expensive, such as large hotel lobbies.

The first commercial lighting application to properly embrace white-LED technology has been the retail display sector, where white LEDs are starting to illuminate luxury goods, cosmetics, and refrigerated display cases. In the latter application, white LEDs benefit from the fact that the efficiency of LEDs increases at lower temperatures, whereas that of fluorescent lamps (the incumbent technology) decreases dramatically. In the residential sector, a modest market is beginning to emerge as several small companies, such as Permlight and LED Lighting Fixtures, develop high-efficacy LED lighting products geared towards the home. Many of these solutions are compatible with standard lamp fittings so that it is a simple case of removing a filament bulb and plugging or screwing in an LED lamp. Overall, the outlook for the use of LEDs in lighting is highly promising, as efficiency continues to improve, prices continue to decline, and hundreds of companies around the world, both small and large, develop lighting systems that use LEDs to address a wide variety of applications. Although many hurdles remain before widespread adoption of LEDs in lighting is possible, market growth is robust. Based on current trends, we may expect to see a market of over $1 billion for LEDs in lighting by 2011. Robert V. Steele is the Director of Optoelectronic Programs at Strategies Unlimited, a market research and consulting firm. He is also the chair of Strategies in Light, an industry conference on HB-LEDs held annually in February in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit http://su.pennnet.com/

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