The Fourth Generation of Lighting – White LED

During the human history, the first generation of Lighting is very primitive oil lamp (candle), the second is the incandescence bulb invented by Edison, the third is fluorescent lamp. Now here comes the revolutionary fourth generation of lighting – white LED which is expected to dominate the lighting market in the next ten years.

Since Nick Holonyak from GE invented the first visible LED (GaAsP), at the 60s of last century, red and green LED born, followed by yellow at 70s, green at 90s. Green LED plus yellow fluorescent material emits white light. Thus, LED applications are expanded from traditional display to most advancing general lighting-to replace the incandescence and fluorescent lamp. With the unparallel advantages of energy efficient, long longevity, fast response, LED is becoming more and more popular in the lighting market.

Market

The semiconductor wafer can not emit any lights before being packaged in a bullet form, so the market is composed of two parts, EPI-Wafer and packaging. According to statistical, in 2005 the value of encapsulation has increased 11.4% to $ 6.7 billion. Japan is the largest LED production country on the world, accounting for 46% of the world market, followed by China Taiwan with 17%. It's estimated in 2008, the value of world packaging market will be up to USD 9. 1 billion, average increase rate 10.9%.

As another statistic's anticipation, the global requirement of white LED is around 4.5billion pcs, as of 2008, the figure will increase to 9.8 billion which more than doubled, average increase rate closed to 30%. From that We can see how large the market potential is. The largest application now is mobile phone, having 68% market share at 2005. Due to cell phone market is being planned, growing slowly, it's still the top application at 2008, but its market share fall down to 40%, while application for automobile and lighting achieve faster growth, from 10% to 22% and 2% to 15%, and for LCD TV and PC, up to 7% and 6%.

According to the study of Nomura Research Institute, because the high demand for mobile phone in developed country have passed, the growth rate will slow down, along with the price of white LED decreased significantly result in the white LED market growth calculated by turnover is far less than by quantity, however its still expected in 2005 ~ 2010 there is 10% of average growth rate, from $ 1.74 billion to $ 2.84 billion. The driving force is from white LED back light source required for large dimension LCD screens and car equipments.

Manufacturing techniques of white LED are mainly held in the Japanese company which occupations 72% of whole market. Amidst of that, Nichia sole accounts for 41.2%, Citizen accounts for 17.8%, OSRAM OPTO 13.7%, Toyota Gosei 12.9%. Seeing the promoting market, through research and development and production cooperation, many western companies including Fairchild, Agilent and Korean and Taiwan companies get involve in LED market make the competition fiercer. Not only will Nichia's market shrink, but through all sort of rearrangement, some new manufacturing companies will arise.

Application

In the recent two years, white LED is mostly applied for mobile phones, digital cameras, portable game consoles as the back light source. As per the stat of 2004, the application is very high, mobile phone 69%, digital camera 67%, digital camcorder 80%, portable game console even reach 100%. High end digital cameras and camcorders' view fetcher and replay monitor require high quality images, so it is required to use as back light source.

Beside, auto needs various of lighting, LED as replacement product Will penetrate this market, first applied to panel and interior light, the application rate is merely 12% -24%, but It is expected that it will raise to 67% by 2008, Currently the average amount of LEDs used in panel is around 18 pcs, it will be up to 25 by 2008.

Automobile lighting application includes fog lamps, turn and break lamps etc. These car lights has special requirement includes but not limit to high reliably, long life (above 10 years). White LED itself should have further improve on brightness, luminous flux, lighting efficiency, heat emission. Particular to the front lamp, now the lighting efficiency of halogen lamp in use is 17 ~ 20 lm / w, luminous flux approx 1500 lm, life 300 ~ 500 hours yet LED still can not catch up with such performances. As per expectation, car LED will increase from $ 5 billion at 2005 to $ 6 billion at 2010, another report forecasts auto adopts white LED as front lamp may account for 10% at 2008.

Secondly, white LED used as back light source for PC and Television and for the general lighting has huge market growth space. It's competitor for being used as back light source is CCFL, in the field of small dimension of mobile phone, digital camera and the like, no matter in performance or cost, not only LED surpasses CCFL it is also very mature. But in the middle-big dimension LCD screen, white LED have large distance, and not very mature regards cost, heat sink, IC diver. Laptop just starts using it as back light source at 2005, then expanding to OA and Television, it's estimated to be put into batch production. The application rate of LCD television will reach 10% at 2008.

As for lighting, besides traditional incandescent lamps and fluorescent lamps, other energy-saving lamps are being developed every day, it's not easy to task for LED to enter this market, despite having high brightness, life, LED still has shortcomings in the facet of life, heat emission, approval rate as well as the high price make it hard to get popularly.

Incandescence lamp efficiency of transformation from electricity to lights is only 5% -10%, fluorescent lamp is 22% ~ 25%, LED is 25% ~ 35%, but its theory transformation rate can reach 90%, so when the figure hits 50 %, it will several times less than incandescence lamp and lamp in terms of energy saving and cost. With that being said, once white LED breaks through the barriers of technology and production scale, needless to say it will have huge market potential. According to the statistic from Roland Haitz for last 34 years, the light output of LED doubles every 18-24 months, calculated by that, to 2025, LED will dominate the lighting market. It has two unparallel advantages of energy efficiency and environmentally friendly make it definitely the best choice for general lighting. The new century of white LED lighting is coming.