The brightest star in the night sky

The summer of 2024 seems to be extremely hot, and the heartbeats of sports fans are also surging. The Paris Olympics, a sports feast that attracts global attention, is released at this moment.

In this summer full of glory and dreams, we have witnessed countless exciting moments: in the men's 4X100-meter medley relay final, Pan Zhanle's last stroke was so majestic that the Chinese team's historic victory made the entire swimming pool boil; in the shooting 10-meter air rifle mixed team final, Huang The precise shooting of Yu Ting and Sheng Lihao scored the first gold medal for the Chinese team, showing the power of the younger generation; in the men's table tennis quarter-finals, Fan Zhendong's shocking comeback was unforgettable. With his perseverance and excellent technology, he successfully advanced to the semi-finals and finally won the championship...

In these passionate events, every competition is a challenge to human limits, and every light is a tribute to the sweat of the athletes. And the lighting of sports venues that cannot be ignored, with its superb performance, provides the best stage for every wonderful moment, giving the brightest light to every drop of sweat, like the brightest star in the night sky, not only illuminates It highlighted the hard work of the athletes and ignited the passion in the hearts of audiences around the world.

1. The brightest star in the night sky

Ams-Osram, the "golden brand" of professional outdoor lighting, has a complete series of LED products that maintain excellent performance, industry-leading reliability, service life, and shocking light efficiency requirements in different outdoor conditions, especially in professional sports events.

In a global sports event a few years ago, the Bird's Nest's bright "China Red" at night shocked the world.

The digital light and color system at that time came from Hangzhou-based digital intelligent manufacturing company Rolaidis, which specializes in urban outdoor lighting, and the cool technology behind it came from ams and Osram.

The technical director of Rolledis also said in an interview at the time that when adhering to the high standards and requirements of national-level sports event venue construction, ams-OSRAM's LED series products with powerful functions, compact size and long service life are an excellent choice.

OSCONIQ® C series is ams-OSRAM's product focusing on sports venue lighting applications.

Huang Gang, chief engineer of ams-OSRAM system solutions, said that the requirements for LED products for stadium lighting mainly include the following dimensions:

First, the center light intensity. Friends who have watched live games will be more impressed. The lights in stadiums are generally installed at a higher position, so they need a higher central light intensity to have the required illumination or brightness when they reach the ground.

The second is the one-time index of TV lighting, that is, TLCI. This index usually refers to the color reproduction of live events after they are broadcast on television. The current reference standard is generally TLCI greater than 90.

Secondly, lighting similar to sports venues puts forward higher requirements on the reliability and lifespan of devices. Both C 2424 and C 3030 in the OSCONIQ® C series meet these high standards.

Among them, OSCONIQ® C 2424 uses a 2 square millimeter chip and can achieve a power level of 2-5W; C 3030 uses a 4 square millimeter chip, which can achieve 3-9W. They all use high-power vertical chips and adopt a flat head lighting method. The size is also relatively small, which can effectively increase the center light intensity.

Comparing OSCONIQ® C 2424 with other ams-OSRAM outdoor LED products (P8), it can be seen in the simulation of an overall stadium lighting solution that using OSCONIQ® C 2424 to achieve the minimum illumination level of 200lux requires a lower luminous flux of only 84,000lm; for P8, it requires 86,000lm. In addition, OSCONIQ® C 2424 can achieve higher brightness with the same lens.

For OSCONIQ® C 3030, comparing it with P9, another ams-OSRAM outdoor lighting LED product (as shown in the picture above), it is not difficult to find that whether a wide-angle lens or a narrow-angle lens is used, the center light intensity is better than that of P9. Especially when using a narrow-angle lens, the advantages of C 3030 will be more obvious.

In addition to central light intensity, size is also crucial. Both C 2424 and C 3030 are smaller than the regular 3535 size flagship products on the market. This ensures that more LEDs can be arranged under the same structural conditions. Especially when considering cost reduction and efficiency improvement, choosing appropriate LEDs to reduce system costs is a more effective way.

Especially in terms of glare control, through the testing and simulation of secondary optical design, it can be clearly found that OSCONIQ® C 2424 is sharper and cleaner at a light-emitting edge, which is significantly better than those LED products with primary lenses. Therefore, the OSCONIQ® C series offers significant advantages when it comes to glare control, which is why it is ideally suited for stadium lighting.

According to Huang Gang, OSCONIQ® C 2424 has been widely used abroad since its release three years ago. ams-Osram also hopes that it will be popularized in the Chinese market and work with OSCONIQ® C 3030, which was officially released at the end of last year, to better empower the presentation of domestic sports events.

2. The solid base card of "golden brand"

Of course, stadium lighting is only one of the many application scenarios for outdoor lighting. ams-OSRAM has an extremely rich product line in outdoor lighting.

Focusing on the main product series, OSLON® Square uses ceramic packaging and high-power vertical chips to provide stable and reliable light output. It has now been developed into mainstream applications in outdoor lighting, especially in the European market;

The OSCONIQ® P series is based on high-power vertical chip technology and adopts EMC packaging. Since it is more economical, it has been popularized in automotive aftermarket and flashlight applications;

The third category is OSCONIQ® S The 5050 series, which combines EMC packaging with formal chip structure, has also formed an application trend in outdoor lighting. Especially as its reliability increases, it will increasingly replace the share of the original high-power part in the future;

The fourth category is the CSP series, including the OSCONIQ® C series and OSLON® Pure series just mentioned for sports lighting. Their characteristics are high power, small size, and flat head design, and are more used in special occasions. Suitable for, for example, stadium lighting, or applications that require compact lamps.

At the same time, different places require different product series.

For example, OSLON® Square is mainly used for main road lighting, tunnel lighting, and large-scale stadium lighting. This application requires high device life, high reliability, and high lumen maintenance rate;

If it is to be used in branch roads or civil stadium lighting, economy and efficiency will be more considered. In this case, OSCONIQ® S 5050 is more suitable.

So when it comes to outdoor lighting, what customers are most concerned about are two major dimensions, one is reliability; the other is performance.

"Reliability is mainly demonstrated from the luminous flux maintenance rate and sulfur prevention," Huang Gang added.

For example, the luminous flux maintenance rate, OSLON® Square can reach the level of L90 greater than 150,000 hours, and the L70 of OSCONIQ® S 5050 can be greater than 100,000 hours;

In terms of anti-sulfurization, OSLON® Square itself adopts an almost silver-free design, so there is basically no vulcanization loss; and on S 5050, ams-OSRAM can achieve better results through the anti-sulfurization layer.

3. How to maintain high luminous flux maintenance rate?

From the previous introduction, we can see that the luminous flux maintenance rate of OSLON® Square is significantly higher than that of OSCONIQ® S 5050.

However, why Woolen cloth?

“It mainly benefits from the role of vertical chips.”

It is reported that the mainstream chip forms currently on the market are divided into three types: formal chips, vertical chips and flip-chips.

The main feature of formal chips, also called horizontal chips, is that the current flows horizontally. Its structure is simple and its cost is low, but its disadvantage is that it cannot provide higher current density when the current flows horizontally;

Secondly, it is the vertical chip, whose current direction is vertical flow, so it can provide higher current density. ams and Osram also believe that vertical chips are currently the most suitable for use in high-power LED devices. "We are also one of the few manufacturers on the market that still insists on designing high-power LED devices with vertical chip solutions."

The third type is flip chip, which as the name suggests is an inversion of the regular chip. This structure puts the electrodes at the bottom of the chip, eliminating the original gold wire and improving part of the light extraction efficiency. However, its shortcomings are the same as those of formal chips. The current also flows horizontally, so under high current conditions, the efficiency is not as good as that of vertical chips.

From the performance point of view, as shown in the figure above, it is a comparison of two conventional chips and the UX3 chip. In a conventional chip, due to the Auger recombination effect, it can be clearly seen that it is brighter near the electrode end and darker in areas farther away.

"The Auger recombination effect is also one of the important factors affecting the efficiency and luminous flux maintenance rate of the LED itself." The UX3 chip can effectively avoid the Auger recombination effect through the production of this columnar electrode, greatly improving the light efficiency of the LED device itself under high current.

It can also be seen from the test curve in the above figure that the higher the current, the more obvious the efficiency advantage of the UX3 chip compared to conventional chips.

"In addition to chip technology, our outdoor lighting products also have special designs at the packaging level. For example, aluminum nitride (AlN) ceramic packaging can effectively avoid chip cracking caused by thermal expansion and cold shrinkage. It also has a high thermal conductivity, which can achieve very low thermal resistance. In addition, the silver-free design also fundamentally prevents vulcanization reactions."

Under the blessing of the series technology, it is reported that through the statistics of the past 3 years, Ames Osram's Oslon? Square's ppm can be done at a level of less than 0.1. Of the equivalent of 10 million LEDs, less than 1 failure level can be achieved. “It also makes it ideal for use in harsh outdoor environments.”