Cost reduction breakthrough: emerging LED packaging into focus

LED has now entered the third wave of growth cycle, a massive attack on the general lighting market, however the high cost of LED package, so as Cree, PHILPS, OSRAM and other LED manufacturers to reduce the target cost, promote the LED packaging factory have the use of flip chip, COB and other emerging packaging design cost efficiency, to enhance the competitiveness of products.

Cost reduction breakthrough: emerging LED packaging into focus

Solid state lighting manufacturers are exploring the packaging of the substrate, type and composition, in order to achieve the perfect balance of price / performance. If you want the general public to draw a LED map, it is likely to see there are still two feet, used to do the instrument display LED. But to illuminate the small display and the computer's LED, its packaging technology has evolved dramatically, with the ancestors of the past together, I am afraid that people can not recognize. Today, LED is facing a third wave of growth cycle, the increase in its benefits will depend on the needs of general lighting, packaging technology requires higher cost efficiency. In the total cost of the packaged LED, the light is the packaging step accounted for 45%, this step has become the focus of the industry is not surprising.

YOLEDevELoppement believes that the industry to further enhance the cost per unit of illumination, to achieve this one of two ways -- each package increases the potency of the product, in order to reduce the number of products in the system level, or reduce the cost per unit. Yole pointed out that LED manufacturers have never been so hard to drive down costs, due to the need to improve the cost per unit of illumination has changed the design philosophy of high power products. Until last year, Yole observed that in most cases, LED manufacturers strive to increase product efficiency and product complexity, but now, some manufacturers focus on reducing the cost of packaging products design methods.

Enhance cost effectiveness, manufacturers have a magic weapon

One notable example of this shift is Cree, based in Durham, North Carolina (NorthCarolina), which puts the LED chip in the package. The design trends of the past many high power LED manufacturers are using vertical LED, the extension or silicon carbide (SiC) substrate has been removed, while the LED structure has been connected to the other carrier wafer, and high power LED one or two years ago, most of the Cree have adopted this design structure.

Cree latest XLamp high brightness LED XB-D product line was launched in January 2012, a simple way to re - return to the previous product - flip chip (Flip-chip) packaging. The product is only used to maintain the original substrate coating technology, Cree will be SiC epitaxial substrate after thinning, on its back surface treatment (Texturing), in order to increase the efficiency of light extraction. Surface treatment of substrates is not a new technology, many companies are using patterned sapphire substrate (PSS), but Cree with a simpler, cheaper design. The company uses a mechanical serrated tool to create grooves on the substrate, which maximize the efficiency of light extraction. This approach is not only cheap, but also very efficient in the generation and emission of light sources, which is a smart design to enhance the cost per unit of illumination.

In addition to Cree, the rest of the manufacturers, such as OSRAM (Osram) and PHILPS (Philips), want to improve cost-effectiveness, but its methods are different. OSRAM is still using the vertical LED architecture, PHILPS still prefer film coating, but they also removed the sapphire crystal, Cree using different flip chip wiring technology. Although PHILPS uses the ball bump technology, Cree uses a low temperature solution to further reduce the cost and increase the thermal contact resistance. So far, Yole is still not observed standardized manufacturing methods.

TV LED production capacity, the cost of power LED decline

In general lighting, LCD TV backlighting was the main driving force to promote the LED sales, but market conditions as expected, resulting in TV backplane power LED general lighting and pile up in excess of requirement cost increase. In power LED minimalist plastic leadless chip carrier (PLCC) package, in addition to replace natural, fluorescent lamp shall be more decentralized multi angle and multi light source, Yole believes that the power LED has been in use only high power LED market, such as a light bulb or projection lamp.

We caused benefits, manufacturers will display specific types of components made of different products is very beneficial to the strategy. First in the field of LED TV, packaged product specifications have been standardized, which is very rare in the LED industry, which allows the economy to be larger. Because the LCD TV market is not as strong as expected, there are a lot of capacity to invest in the oversupply of medium power LED, so that the cost of further decline, for some applications, the price per illuminance will become very attractive.

Cost effectiveness considerations also affect the way in which LED vendors meet the user's different color requirements. The warm light needs to let the industry for the industry widely used yttrium aluminum garnet (YttriumAluminiumGarnet, YAG) and foreign technology. Manufacturers try to turn some of the GaN (GaN) emitters to produce cold white light to turn yellow to replace YAG. Yole believes that YAG and its silicon substrate is still the primary form of packaging, however, with the industry's diverse services, adjust the height of a variety of different color needs have emerged.

To achieve this goal, manufacturers have been added to the red color in two ways. First, at the system level, the manufacturer can add a red LED chip containing a YAG phosphor to the standard blue chip. Cree use this approach, the practice called "true white" (TrueWhite) technology, OSRAM is also the practice. Another approach can be added red hair, mostly contain