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The Magazine of Solid-State Lighting

Spring Issue
www.LEDJournal.com

2011

Volume 6, Issue 1 Editor & Publisher David Webster Director of Content Shannon Given Associate Editors Heather Krier Nick Depperschmidt Director of Sales Jessi Albers News Editors Laura Mayo, Sue Hannebrink, Jeremy Fleming, Jessi Albers Manager of Administration Marsha Grillo Director of Support Services Marc Vang Circulation/Data Entry Ross Webster Office Manager Julie Williams Advertising Sales and Marketing Laura Mayo, Account Executive Julie Hammond, Production Manager Jennifer Graham, Marketing Assistant
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FeatureS
A Just the Facts Approach to Clear Up Market Confusion . . . 4 Lightfair International 2011: Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The LED Industry: Riding the Display Wave, Looking For Lighting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 On the Cover: Bridge Comes to Life at Sunset with All-White Interactive LED Light Show. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

departmentS
2011 Annual Resource Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Application Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 LEDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Arrays, Modules & Components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Materials, Testing & Manufacturing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Applications & Integrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Industry News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

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The LeD InDusTry:

By Paul Semenza, Senior Vice President DisplaySearch Light emitting diodes (LEDs) have served markets such as automotive, signage and indicators for many years. The LED industry entered into a new phase in 2010, as the market for LED backlights in large-area liquid crystal displays (LCDs), particularly for TVs, took off. At the same time, the industry is looking ahead to an even larger market, general illumination. This rapid growth has been enabled by the ongoing cost reductions and performance improvements in LED performance over the past two decades. At the same time, the larger size and more demanding requirements (most notably in terms of cost) of these new markets are having effects on the industry structure and driving new technology developments.
Large-area LCd Backlights the Second Wave for Led; General Illumination will be the third

riding the display Wave, Looking for Lighting

Figure 1. LED backlights are used in more than half of all large-area TFT LCD panels. Source: DisplaySearch Q3'10 Quarterly LED Backlight Report

The properties of LEDs, solid state devices that with narrow and accurately controlled spectrum, fast response time, rigidity, low power consumption, high efficacy and long lifetime, are transforming the LCD industry and enabling a switch from the legacy CCFL backlights. LED backlights allow for faster switching of the display (higher frame rates), wider color gamut and higher contrast, in thinner and lower-power packages. Led by notebook PC displays, LED backlights are taking over the key applications for large LCD panels (Figure 1). In particular, the conversion of LCD TVs, with their large sizes, to LED backlights is driving demand for LED chips; new applications in lighting are also contributing to growth (Figure 2). Conventional bulbs and halogen lamps in automotive applications have been replaced with LEDs due to benefits including low power consumption, compact design and long life. LED lamps and street lights are regarded as key lighting markets for LEDs. These applications are supported by governments with large budgets, as initial installation costs can be quite high, although the long lifetime re-

Figure 2. Total LED demand will pass 100 billion chips in 2011 Source: DisplaySearch Q3'10 Quarterly LED Backlight Report

duces maintenance costs, resulting in lower lifecycle costs.

Industry Structure evolving with market Growth

As the LED industry has geared up to pursue the display and lighting markets, incumbent makers have focused more on the opportunity to expand downstream, particularly into lighting, leaving the display backlighting market somewhat open to new entrants. Longstanding market participants include Nichia, a developer of low current white LED along with YAG

phosphor technology and IP, as well as Cree, Osram and Philips Lumileds, firsttier LED makers of high-power chips, targeting lighting applications. Osram is also leading the exterior automotive LED market with high power technology. Given the longer history of LED use in mobile device and notebook PC displays (Figure 1), Japanese LED makers including Nichia and Toyoda Gosei have established dominant positions in side view LEDs for mobile phone and notebook PC applications with low forward voltage technology. However, the rapid shift in
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backlight technology for LCD TVs and monitors created more demand than could be handled by the existing suppliers, who also viewed these applications as commodity markets. Thus, to secure supplies of LEDs for backlights, nearly every panel maker including Samsung, LG, AUO, and ChiMei Innolux, has entered LED manufacturing through shared investments, joint ventures, or setting up new companies. The impact of this new demand and competition is beginning to be seen in LED package prices (Figure 3 on page 10), which are falling consistently, particularly in the 5630 packages used in LCD TV backlights. LED unit price depends on factors including intensity, package type, color, bin selection and patent rights. In addition to market competition and demand, improvements in manufacturing process technology continue to drive down production costs.
manufacturing moving into High Gear, But technology is Still evolving

The growing demand is driving advances throughout the LED supply chain, for example in epitaxial growth processes using MOCVD equipment. These processes enable higher manufacturing capacity and luminous efficiency. MOCVD equipment has been rapidly improving, moving from 2 inch wafers to 4, 6, and 8 inch wafers, as well as increasing throughput and improving yields. There has been a boom in MOCVD equipment sales, with more than 200 machines installed in both Korea and Taiwan in 2010. As demand has grown, incumbent players such as Aixtron and Veeco have been

joined by new competitors, including Applied Materials and several Korean firms. The total LED package efficiency includes chip efficiency, phosphor efficiency and package efficiency. Sapphire (Al2O3) is the most widely used substrate material for LED epitaxial growth with gallium nitride compounds, due to its relatively low cost and maturity. However, sapphire has a high level of lattice dislocation, so some LED makers are trying GaN or SiC, ZnO and Si substrate materials to improve epitaxial performance. To reduce heat in the chip and to increase chip efficiency, improving light extraction is an area of focus; utilizing surface roughness or surface patterns to reduce total internal reflection in the chip can improve extraction. Another area of improvement has been in the chip structure, with the development of vertical structure LEDs. Chip packaging and driver ICs are also important aspects to high-volume LED manufacturing. The package must meet specific electrical, optical, mechanical and thermal requirements, while reducing materials and assembly costs. For displays, top and side view packages have been developed, and packages such as ceramic and arrays are used in lighting. Wafer-level packaging and flip-chip techniques can also improve manufacturing efficiency. In driver ICs, the trend is toward higher levels of integration, although large area backlights continue to use external MOSFET devices due to the output requirements. Phosphor performance has a directly impact on LED color gam-

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ut, luminous intensity and lifetime. YAG (Nichia), TAG (Osram), BOSE (Intematix, Toyoda Gosei, Merck and others), and Nitride (Mitsubishi Chemical, Denki Kagaku) mainly use phosphor compositions. White LEDs typically use GaInN chips that emit in the blue, along with a yellow phosphor that converts most of the blue into a broad band. Other approaches to producing white light include using red and green phosphors with a blue emitter, as well as a UV emitter with red, green and blue phosphors. These approaches result in higher CRI (color rendering index, a measure of how natural the light appears, which is important in lighting), but lower luminous efficiencies. An alternate approach is to combine red, green, and blue emitters in a multi-chip package, which tends to have high cost. Two of the most common yellow phosphors are YAG (Y3Al5O12), originally developed by Nichia, and TAG (Tb3Al5O12), developed by Osram; both are typically activated with trivalent cerium (Ce). An alternative class of materials use silicate phosphors; intellectual property for these materials has been asserted by a group called the BOSE consortium (consisting of Tridonic, Toyoda Gosei, Leuchtstoffwerk Breitungen and Litec GbR), which has signed a crosslicensing agreement with Intematix. Recently, phosphors have been developed around SiAlON materials by Denka and nitrides by Mitsubishi Chemical. These different types of phosphors can be complex to create, and are typically protected by patents, resulting in materials costs in the thousands of dollars per kilogram. These materials are also limited in efficiency and can suffer from thermal decay. This has led to continued development of inorganic phosphorescent and fluorescent materials, as well as new luminescent materials based on nano-scale semiconductors, called quantum dots. Quantum dots are nanometer-sized semiconductor crystals that use materials from periodic groups II-VI, III-V or IVVI, typically synthesized in the liquid phase, and appear similar to colored inks. Quantum dots provide the stability and reliability of inorganic semiconductor materials,

Figure 3. Prices of LED packages used in LCD backlights falling, particularly those used in TV backlights Source: DisplaySearch Monthly LED Pricing Report

and since they can be tuned through selection of material and crystal size, and are processed in solution. Companies pursuing these technologies include QD Vision and Nanosys, both of whom are working with backlight and display makers to commercialize these materials. market Growth, technology Improvements Create a Virtuous Cycle Until 2010, the LED industry grew through development of multiple applications, including automotive, mobile phone backlight and keypad lights, and notebook PC display backlighting, as well as indicators, signage and illumination. With the rapid adoption of LED backlights in LCD TVs and monitors, the industry is undergoing a boom in investment, and new companies are entering the market. Developments in manufacturing, materials and packaging have all contributed to the increased output and falling prices for LED devices, which in turn is what made the widespread adoption in display backlights possible. But the increased scale of manufacturing is driving additional improvements in LEDs, and ongoing materials and process development will likely further performance. This will open up the ultimate market for LEDs, general illumination.

Paul Semenza is senior vice president of analyst services at DisplaySearch and covers flat-panel displays, consumer electronics and solar energy. Prior to joining DisplaySearch, Paul served as vice president of Display Research for iSuppli Corp. from 2000 to 2008 and for Stanford Resources, Inc. from 1997 to 2000. Prior to Stanford Resources, Paul was a program officer at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council, where he directed studies on IT policy, and he was an analyst for the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), covering emerging technologies such as flat panel displays. Paul started his career in engineering, working for The Analytic Sciences Corp. from 1985 to 1992. Paul has a bachelors degree in electrical engineering and a masters degree in electro-optics from Tufts University and a masters degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. He can be reached at Paul.Semenza@ Displaysearch.com.

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