Illumination With Solid State Lighting Technology

Presnted by:

L. Varsha (20D41A0243) A-Section

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Sri Indu College of Engineering and Technology
Abstract—High-power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have begun
to differentiate themselves from their more common cousins the
indicator LED. Today these LEDs are designed to generate 10–100
lm per LED with efficiencies that surpass incandescent and
halogen bulbs. After a summary of the motivation for the devel-
opment of the high-power LED and a look at the future markets,
we describe the current state of high-power LED technology and
the challenges that lay ahead for development of a true “solid
state lamp.” We demonstrate record performance and reliability
for high-power colored and white LEDs and show results from
the worlds first 100-plus lumen white LED lamp, the solid state
equivalent of Thomas Edison’s 20-W incandescent lightbulb
approximately one century later.
Index Terms—Flip chip, gallium nitride, GaN, illumination,
solid-state lighting, LEDs, light-emitting diodes, phosphor, white
light.
Fig. 1. Haitz’s Law for LED flux—LED flux per package has doubled every
I. INTRODUCTION 18–24 mo for 30+ years.

L IGHT-EMITTING DIODES (LEDs) have gained broad

recognition as the ubiquitous little lights that tell us our
monitors are on, the phone is off the hook or the oven is hot.
sources are predominantly white with CIE color coordinates
very near the Planckian, producing good to excellent
color rendering. Today there really is no such thing as a com-
Recent advances in AlInGaP Red and AlInGaN Blue and Green mercial “solid state lamp” for use in illumination. However, a
semiconductor growth technology have enabled applications branch in the evolutionary tree is forming and differences are
wherein several single to several millions of these indicator beginning to appear in the technologies used for low power
style LEDs can be packaged together to be used in full color LED indicators and the high power LED light sources that will
signs, automotive interior and exterior signaling applications evolve into lighting sources. In this paper we will trace the
including traffic signals. These more recent applications differ common ancestors for indicator and high power LEDs, look
from the “the ubiquitous little lights” of a decade ago in that at the markets that are driving advancement of high power
the viewer is often not tens to hundreds of centimeters from the LEDs, address technical challenges in moving toward true solid
LED source but may be tens to hundreds of meters away from state lighting sources, summarize recent advances in power
the LED source. Still the preponderance of applications require flip chips, including lamp reliability, white LED technology,
that the viewer look directly at the LED. In this sense, even and conclude with a look at what the future might hold for
the “high brightness” or “high efficiency” LED applications Illumination with Solid State Lighting Technology.
are dominated by indicator LEDs. This is NOT “Solid State
Lighting”. Artificial “lighting” sources are fluorescent II. LED EVOLUTION—COMMON ANCESTOR OF
tubes, 60-plus Watt incandescent light bulbs, high intensity
INDICATOR AND HIGH POWER LEDS
discharge lamps etc. which all share three key characteristics
differentiating them on the evolutionary tree as a species apart The first practical LED was developed in 1962 and was
from the indicator lamp. First, they are rarely viewed directly. made of a compound semiconductor alloy, gallium arsenide
Light from a lighting source is viewed in reflection off of phosphide [1], which emitted red light. From 1962, compound
the illuminated object. Second, the unit of measure (flux) is semiconductors would provide the foundation for the commer-
the kilolumen (klm) or higher, not the mlm, lm or worse yet cial expansion of LEDs. Analogous to the famous Moore’s
the Cd often used for indicator LED lamps. Finally lightin Law [2] in silicon which predicts a doubling of the number of
transistors in a chip every 18–24 months, LED luminous output
(flux, measured in lumens) has been following Haitz’s Law
(Fig. 1) [3], doubling every 18–24 months for the past 34 years.
From 1968 when the first commercial LEDs were introduced
Fig. 2. Four generations of AlInGaP LEDs: (a) Absorbing substrate (AS) LED. (b) Transparent substrate (TS). (c) High-power LED with 5 TS flux. (d)
Trunction inverted pyramid (TIP) LED with 1.5 flux of high-power square chip.

at 0.001 lm/LED using GaAsP until the mid-1990s commercial ductor layers proved to be substantial challenges that required
LEDs were used exclusively as indicators. In terms of number nearly a decade of work to resolve [8]. The result was AlInGaP
of LEDs sold, indicators and other small signal applications in LEDs with internal quantum efficiencies approaching 100%;
2002 still consume the largest volume of LEDs, with annual nearly every electron and hole pair injected into the device
global consumption exceeding several LEDs per person on the resulted in the creation of a photon [AS AlInGaP Fig. 2(a)].
planet. The problem was then how to get the photons that had been
The development of AlGaAs LEDs grown on GaAs sub- generated inside the semiconductor LED out into the world
strates and employing fully lattice-matched direct bandgap outside the semiconductor where they could be used. The first
systems and hetero-structure active regions [4] allowed these hurdle was to prevent light from being absorbed in the narrow
early red LEDs to exceed the luminous efficiency of a red-fil- bandgap ( eV nm) GaAs substrate. Techniques such
tered incandescent bulb. Efficiency was further doubled by as incorporation in the epitaxial structure of Bragg mirrors,
the use of transparent substrate devices (AlGaAs grown on and direct growth on GaP have been tried, but the most suc-
AlGaAs) [5]. cessful technique is removal of the GaAs substrate by etching
The development of organo–metallic vapor phase epitaxy and replacement with transparent GaP by wafer bonding as
(OMVPE) crystal growth techniques enabled the introduction developed at Hewlett-Packard in 1994. [TS AlInGaP Fig. 2(b)]
of a new material system, AlGaInP on GaAs. AlInGaP resulted At 25 lm/W efficiency, nearly ten times the efficiency of a red
in the fabrication of high-brightness materials from yellow filtered light bulb, and several lumens per LED, these LEDs
to red [6]. In the early 1990s, LumiLeds Lighting (then the enabled the first LED stop lights on automobiles, LED red
Hewlett-Packard Optoelectronics Division 1 ) mastered the traffic signals, and single color outdoor signs. But at 3 lm/LED
complex OMVPE growth process of quaternary aluminum uses were still limited to those applications where the user was
indium gallium phosphide (AlInGaP) on GaAs substrates. The expected to look directly at the LED.
AlInGaP material system allows the creation of light in the red Following closely behind the commercialization of AlInGaP,
and amber regions of the spectrum. Alloy ordering, hydrogen two groups, Shuji Nakamura at Nichia Chemical [9] and
passivation of acceptor atoms [7], p–n junction placement and Prof. Akasaki and Prof. Amano [10] at Nagoya University
oxygen incorporation into the aluminum-containing semicon- and later Meijo University were mastering the complex
OMVPE growth process of aluminum indium gallium nitride
1Originally the Hewlett-Packard Optoelectronics Division (OED). OED be-
came part of Agilent when Agilent was divided from Hewlett-Packard. In 1999,
on sapphire substrates using atmospheric-pressure OMVPE.
Lumileds Lighting was formed as an Agilent and Philips joint venture, retaining The AlInGaN material system has a wider bandgap than
the high-brightness LED businesses of the old HP OED. AlInGaP and allows access to the higher energy green, blue,
Fig. 3. Potential power savings versus traditional lighting. Today’s Luxeon
white pc-LEDs are in the 20–30 lm/W range, but flux/LED is still low. Assumed
50% optical flux utilization for CFL and Fluorescent, but 100% for LED.

Fig. 4. Luxeon high-power LED reliability for white pc-LED and red AlInGaP
and UV parts of the color spectrum. As has been found in LED under room-temperature operating life condition.
AlInGaP, alloy clustering, hydrogen passivation of acceptor
atoms [11], p–n junction placement and oxygen incorporation
into the aluminum-containing semiconductor layers proved cool operation. Their small size allows design flexibility in the
to be substantial challenges. The AlInGaN material system is control and steering of the emitted light by utilizing sophisti-
not as well understood as the AlInGaP material system, and cated secondary optics. However, today’s lighting applications
today internal quantum efficiencies at typical operating current which require a light source to illuminate a desk, a screen, or
densities for AlInGaN green devices hover around 20–40% a room demand not only high efficiency and long life, but also
with blue devices operating in the 40–60% range. Nevertheless, high flux, all at a low unit cost. A single 60-W incandescent
by taking advantage of the transparent sapphire substrate and bulb emits 1 klm of white light with a color rendering index
the human eye’s greater sensitivity to green light than to either near 100; that is 300 times the amount the light emitted by a
blue or red, Nichia Chemical, Lumileds and others have been typical phosphor converted indicator white LED (pc-LED) at a
able to introduce multilumen green LEDs that together with small fraction of the upfront cost. The challenge is designing
multilumen red AlInGaP and 1 lumen blue LEDs enables LED devices and packages that sustain two to three orders of
large full color signs to be made entirely from solid state light magnitude higher input drive power than traditional ( 60 mW)
sources. Along with the high brightness blue LEDs, white indicator LEDs whilst retaining the same high efficiency and re-
LEDs that use high energy blue photons from a blue AlInGaN liability.
LED, and incorporate a phosphor to convert some of the blue The pioneering work on high-power LEDs began at Lumileds
photons into yellow, the complementary color to blue, have Lighting in 1998 with the introduction of the first commer-
emerged. The human eye perceives this combination of blue cial high power LED [13]. At 1-W input power, Luxeon de-
and yellow light as a white light. Finally, 30 years after the vices operate at power levels 20 times that of traditional 5-mm
introduction of the first commercial LED in 1968 the stage has indicator LEDs with efficiencies that can be as much as 50%
been set for some new thinking. greater. Lifetimes extrapolate into the tens of thousands of hours
(Fig. 4). Commercialization of high-power LEDs in 1998 has
impacted the decades-old Haitz’s Law (Fig. 1), manifesting as a
iii. THE PROMISE OF SOLID STATE LIGHTING knee in the lm/LED versus time plot, defining the point in LED
In 1999, the USA consumed 3 Trillion kWh of energy, 21% of evolution when power LEDs diverged from indicator LEDs.
which was used for lighting. Incandescent bulbs consumed 40% Key among Lumileds’ achievements is a dramatic reduction in
of the energy used for lighting (252 Billion kWh) to generate package thermal resistance from the 300 K/W level of indicator
15% of the total light produced. The more efficient fluorescent LEDs to less than 15 K/W for the Luxeon line of LEDs (Fig. 5).
and discharge light sources consumed the remaining of the en- This 20 reduction in thermal resistance enables devices to
ergy (378 Billion kWh) generating 85% of the light. At nearly be pumped to 20 the input power whilst emitting 55-lm red,
$60 B/year, $12 B of which is for sources alone, the lighting 30-lm green, 10-lm blue, about 25-lm (pc-LEDs) white light, for
market dwarfs the $3 B/year (2000) indicator LED market [12]. 1 W of input power. At 0.025 klm, the white devices are still
With the convergence in the mid 1990s of major advances 40 times below the 1 klm per unit flux threshold for entry into
in AlInGaN and AlInGaP material technologies by the turn of general illumination as single device sources. Fig. 6, however,
the millennium LEDs were rapidly surpassing the efficiency of shows an overhead table lighting fixture designed by Philips
color filtered fluorescent light bulbs and white incandescent and Lighting utilizing a cluster of 12 Luxeon white sources gen-
halogen light bulbs. Fig. 3 shows the percentage power savings erating 0.3 klm of white light. Fig. 7 shows a next-genera-
for LEDs versus other conventional illumination sources. LEDs tion Luxeon LED, which is the world’s brightest white LED at
inherit other important advantages including lifetimes measured 0.15 klm at 5-W drive, next to a 15-W incandescent bulb. This
in tens of thousands of hours, ruggedness, environmental friend- LED generates nearly 40% more light, occupies 1% of the
liness (no mercury), compact size, low operating voltages, and package volume, and requires only 33% of the power of the in-
Fig. 5. Evolution of LED package technology: Power LEDs can handle 50 power of a typical indicator LED.

Fig. 7. Comparison of common low wattage incandescent, fluorescent, and

high-power LED bulb. The high-power LED solution offers nearly 40% more
light than the 15-W incandescent while using 1=3 of the power!

advantage of the compact source size and narrow color bands,

while providing extended color range, ruggedness, and elimi-
nating high-voltage power supplies.

Conclusion

SSL uses LEDs and OLEDs to convert electricity into light

for illumination. 2 Whereas more than 90% of the power
Fig. 6. Lumileds Luxeon Ring: Fixture design by Philips Lighting
Lumileds. Twelve Luxeon sources, 0.24-klm total light output.
and
input into a traditional incandescent light bulb is wasted as
heat, SSL has potential energy efficiencies of 50% or greater.
candescent lightbulb. Twelve of these high-powered 0.15-klm
devices are sufficient to make a blue-tinted high-intensity dis-
charge (HID) equivalent 1.8-klm automotive headlamp. Single
color green versions of the 5-W Luxeon devices offer luminous
fluxes in excess of a 0.13 klm per package. Two of these Luxeon
sources can replace the 150-W light bulb in a typical or
US traffic signal resulting in 90% energy savings. RGB com-
binations of Luxeon sources have efficiencies that even rival
those of cold cathode fluorescent lamps. For example, applica-
tions such as backlighting for LCD televisions and monitors take