Power LEDs for Automotive Exterior Lighting 2002-01-0380
Within the last years light emitting diodes are entering the market for automotive exterior lighting. More and more applications such as CHMSLs, brake-, tail-, and indicator-lights are realized with LEDs. For these areas new high flux packages with high stability and best thermal conductivity are necessary.
This article presents new premolded SMT-devices with an integrated copper heat sink. Based on thermal and mechanical FEM - simulations new package designs to reach the wished characteristics will be discussed, such like usability of conventional IR-soldering methods, high temperature cycling stability, low thermal resistance and high optical flux.
In this paper power LEDs will be compared with conventional LEDs, especially the electro-optical characteristics in different circuit designs, the investigations of thermal management, based on various package densities and PCB - materials. Additionally the assembly and application possibilities. The result of the comparison will show the advantages and disadvantages of different LED - devices for various applications and will give a guideline which LED is best qualified for possible exterior lighting designs.
In the near future with increasing chip efficiency even headlights appear to be possible. Therefore we will give an prospect of possibilities to use LEDs also for such lighting purposes.
