Online Encyclopedia
Light-emitting diode
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits incoherent monochromatic light when electrically biased in the forward direction. This effect is a form of electroluminescence. The color depends on the semiconducting material used, and can be near-ultraviolet, visible or infrared. Nick Holonyak Jr. (1928– ) of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed the first practical visible-spectrum LED in 1962.[1]
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LED technology
An LED is a special type of semiconductor diode. Like a normal diode, it consists of a chip of semiconducting material impregnated, or doped, with impurities to create a structure called a pn junction. Charge-carriers (electrons and holes) are created by an electric current passing through the junction. When an electron meets a hole, it falls into a lower energy state, and releases energy in the form of a photon as it does so.
The wavelength of the light emitted, and therefore its colour, depends on the bandgap energy of the materials forming the pn junction. A normal diode, typically made of silicon or germanium, emits invisible far-infrared light, but the materials used for an LED have bandgap energies corresponding to near-infrared, visible or near-ultraviolet light.
Unlike incandescent bulbs, which can operate with either AC or DC, LEDs require a DC supply of the correct polarity. When the voltage across the pn junction is in the correct direction, a significant current flows and the device is said to be forward biased. The voltage across the LED in this case is fixed for a given LED and is proportional to the energy of the emitted photons. If the voltage is of the wrong polarity, the device is said to be reverse biased, very little current flows, and no light is emitted.
Because the voltage versus current characteristics of an LED are much like any diode, they can be destroyed by connecting them to a voltage source much higher than their turn on voltage. A good LED driver circuit is either a constant current source or an approximation to a current source made by connecting the LED in series with a current limiting resistor to a voltage source. The voltage drop across a forward biased LED increases as the amount of light emitted increases because of the optical power being radiated. One consequence is that LEDs of the same type can be readily operated in parallel. The turn-on voltage of an LED is a function of the color, a higher forward drop is associated with emitting higher energy (bluer) photons. The reverse voltage that most LEDs can sustain without damage is usually only a few volts. Some LED units contain two diodes, one in each direction and each a different colour (typically red and green), allowing two-colour operation or a range of colors to be created by altering the percentage of time the voltage is in each polarity.
Conventional LEDs are made of inorganic minerals such as:
- aluminium gallium arsenide (AlGaAs) - red and infrared
- gallium arsenide/phosphide (GaAsP) - red, orange and yellow
- gallium nitride (GaN) - green
- gallium phosphide (GaP) - green
- zinc selenide (ZnSe) - blue
- indium gallium nitride (InGaN) - blue
- silicon carbide (SiC) - blue
- diamond (C) - ultraviolet
- silicon (Si) - under development
LED development began with infrared and red devices, and technological advances have made possible the production of devices with ever shorter wavelengths.
Commercially viable blue LEDs based on the wide bandgap semiconductor gallium nitride were invented by Shuji Nakamura while working in Japan at Nichia Corporation in 1993 and became widely available in the late 1990s. They can be added to existing red and green LEDs to produce white light. Most "white" LEDs in production today use a blue LED chip covered by a yellowish phosphor coating usually made of cerium doped yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG:Ce) crystals which have been powdered and bound in a type of viscous adhesive. The LED chip emits blue light, part of which is converted to yellow by the YAG:Ce. The single crystal form of YAG:Ce is actually considered a scintillator rather than a phosphor. This mixture of blue and yellow light creates the impression of white - hence the bluish or yellowish tint that these diodes usually exhibit. White LEDs can also be made by coating near ultraviolet (NUV) emitting LEDs with a mixture of high efficiency europium based red and blue emitting phosphors plus green emitting copper and aluminum doped zinc sulfide (ZnS:Cu,Al). This is a method analogous to the way fluorescent lights work. The newest method used to produce white light LEDs uses no phosphors at all and is based on homoepitaxially grown zinc selenide (ZnSe) on a ZnSe substrate which simultaneously emits blue light from its active region and yellow light from the substrate.
Ultraviolet and blue LEDs are relatively expensive compared to the more common reds, greens, yellows and infrareds and are thus less commonly used in commercial applications.
The semiconducting chip is encased in a solid plastic lens, which is much tougher than the glass envelope of a traditional light bulb or tube. The plastic may be coloured, but this is only for cosmetic reasons and does not affect the colour of the light emitted.
Most typical LEDs are designed to operate with no more than 30-60 milliwatts of electrical power. Around 1999, commercial LEDs capable of continuous use at one watt of input power were introduced. These LEDs used much larger semiconductor die sizes to handle the large power input. As well, the semiconductor die were mounted to metal slugs to allow for heat removal from the LED die. In 2002, 5 watt LEDs were available with efficiencies of 18-22 lumen per watt. It is projected that by 2005, 10 watt units will be available with efficiencies of 60 lumen per watt. These devices will produce about as much light as a common 50 watt incandescent bulb, and will facilitate use of LEDs for general illumination needs.
In the last few years (up to 2003) there has been much research into organic LEDs or OLEDs, which are made of semiconducting organic polymers. The best efficiency of an OLED so far is about 10%. These promise to be much cheaper to fabricate than inorganic LEDs, and large arrays of them can be deposited on a screen using simple printing methods to create a colour graphic display.
Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs)
If the emissive layer material of an LED is an organic compound, it is known as an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED). To function as a semiconductor, the organic emissive material must have conjugated pi bonds. The emissive material can be a small organic molecule in a crystalline phase, or a polymer. Polymer materials can be flexible; such LEDs are known as PLEDs or FLEDs.
Compared with regular LEDs, OLEDs are lighter and polymer LEDs can have the added benefit of being flexible. Some possible future applications of OLEDs could be:
- Light sources
- Wall decorations
- Luminous cloth
LED applications
Here is a list of known applications for LEDs, some of which are further elaborated upon in the following text:
- in general, LEDs are commonly used as information indicators in various types of embedded systems (many of which are listed below)
- thin, lightweight message displays, e.g. in public information signs (at airports and railway stations, among other places)
- status indicators, e.g. on/off lights on professional instruments and consumers audio/video equipment
- as infrared LEDs in remote controls (for TVs, VCRs, etc)
- clusters of LEDs are used in traffic signals, replacing ordinary bulbs behind coloured glass
- bicycle lighting and indicator lights; also for pedestrians to be seen by car traffic
- calculator and measurement instrument displays (seven segment displays), although now mostly replaced by LCDs
- red or yellow LEDs are used in indicator and (alpha)numeric displays in environments where night vision must be retained: aircraft cockpits, submarine and ship bridges, astronomy observatories, and in the field, e.g. night time animal watching and military field use
- red or yellow LEDs are also used in photographic darkrooms, for providing lighting which does not lead to unwanted exposure of the film
- illumination, e.g. flashlights (aka torches, UK), and backlights for LCD screens
- signaling/emergency beacons and strobes
- as movement sensors, e.g. in mechanical and optical computer mice and trackballs
- in LED printers, e.g. high-end colour printers
LEDs offer benefits in terms of maintenance and safety. The typical working lifetime of a device, including the bulb, is ten years, which is much longer than the lifetimes of most other light sources. Further, LEDs fail by dimming over time, rather than the abrupt burn-out of incandescent bulbs. LEDs give off less heat than incandescent light bulbs and are less fragile than fluorescent lamps. Since an individual device is smaller than a centimetre in length, LED-based light sources used for illumination and outdoor signals are built using clusters of tens of devices.
Incandescent light bulbs for traffic signals and pedestrian crosswalks are gradually being replaced by LED clusters.
Lighting systems using incandescent bulbs are cheap to buy but inefficient, generating from about 16 lumen per watt for a domestic tungsten bulb to 22 lm/W for a halogen bulb. Fluorescent tubes are more efficient, from 50 to 100 lm/W for domestic tubes, allowing large energy savings, but are bulky and fragile and require starter circuits. LEDs are robust and moderately efficient, up to 32 lumen per watt, but are expensive, although their cost is falling. The technologies for LED production are developing rapidly.
Because they are monochromatic, LED lights have great power advantages over white lights where a specific color is required. Unlike the white lights, the LED does not need a filter that absorbs most of the emitted white light. Colored fluorescent lights are made, but they are not widely available. LED lights are inherently colored, and are available in a wide range of colors. One of the most recently introduced colors is the emerald green (bluish green, about 500 nm) that meets the legal requirements for traffic signals and navigation lights.
The largest LED display in the world is 36 metre high (118 feet), at Times Square, Manhattan.
There are applications that specifically require light that does not contain any blue component. Examples are photographic darkroom safe lights, illumination in laboratories where certain photo-sensitive chemicals are used, and situations where dark adaptation (night vision) must be preserved, such as cockpit and bridge illumination, observatories, etc. Yellow LED lights are a good choice to meet these special requirements because the human eye is most sensitive to yellow light (about 500 lm/watt emitted), because their monochromatic light has no blue component, as well as their other advantages discussed above.
Indoor and outdoor LED panels
There are two types of LED panels: conventional, using discrete LEDs, and SMD (Surface Mounted Device) panels. Most outdoor screens and some indoor screens are built around discrete LEDs, also known as individually mounted LEDs. A cluster of red, green, and blue diodes is driven together to form a full-color pixel, usually square in shape. These pixels are spaced evenly apart and are measured from center to center for absolute pixel resolution.
Most indoor screens on the market are built using SMD technology — a trend that is now extending to the outdoor market. An SMD pixel consists of red, green, and blue diodes mounted on a chipset, which is then mounted on the driver PC board. The individual diodes are smaller than a pin and are set very close together. The difference is that minimum viewing distance is reduced by 25% from the discrete diode screen with the same resolution.
Indoor use generally requires a screen that is based on SMD technology and has a minimum brightness of 600 nit (a standard unit of luminance — candela per square metre). This will usually be more than sufficient for corporate and retail applications, but under high ambient-brightness conditions, you may need more punch to compete. Fashion and auto shows are two examples of high-brightness stage lighting that may require a higher LED brightness. Conversely, when your screen may be in a shot on a television show, the requirement will often be for lower brightness levels with lower color temperatures.
For outdoor use, you need at least 2,000 nits for most situations, whereas higher brightness types of up to 5,000 nits cope even better with direct sunlight on the screen. Until recently, only discrete diode screens could achieve that brightness level. (The brightness of LED panels also can be turned down.)
For specific projects, you need to take into account factors such as sight lines, local authority planning requirements (if the installation is to become semi-permanent), vehicular access (trucks carrying the screen, truck-mounted screens, or cranes), cable runs for power and video (accounting for both distance and health and safety requirements), power, suitability of the ground for the location of the screen (check to make sure there are no pipes, shallow drains, caves, or tunnels that may not be able to support heavy loads), and overhead obstructions.
See also
External links
- The LED Museum – Information about old and new LED developments
- The LED FAQ Pages – a compilation of questions and answers about light-emitting diodes and infrared emitters