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Introduction to LED Thermal Management and Reliability

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Thermal Management for LED Applications

Part of the book series: Solid State Lighting Technology and Application Series ((SSLTA,volume 2))

Abstract

Some like it hot, others do not. And those others for sure include the designers of products that contain light-emitting diodes (LEDs). This book is about thermal management of LEDs and especially LED applications. The main question to be addressed is: Why do we need thermal management? As Belady put it eloquently in 2001 [Belady and Minichiello, Electronics Cooling Magazine, May issue, 2003]:

The ultimate goal of system thermal design is not the prediction of component temperatures, but rather the reduction of thermally associated risk to the product.

Hence, the objectives of a designer are not in the first place to calculate or measure temperatures, but to keep the lifetime beyond x years, to keep the color point within margin y, and to raise the efficiency to z %. And indeed, these objectives, determining the quality of LED-based products, are linked to the junction temperature. This is the main reason why a book on LED thermal management starts with an introductory chapter on LED reliability issues.

Parts of this chapter have been sourced from a chapter in a book on Solid State Lighting Reliability [Pecht and Chang, Solid state lighting reliability: components to systems, Springer, New York, pp. 43–110, 2013].

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The color temperature of a white light is the temperature of an ideal Planckian black-body radiator that radiates a light of comparable hue to that light source. Thus, the color temperature of a white light of thermal radiation from an ideal black-body radiator is defined as equal to its surface temperature in kelvins. When the black-body radiator is heated to high temperatures, the heated black body emits the color, going from red, to orange, to yellow, to white, and finally to bluish white. The Planckian locus starts out in the red, then moves through the orange and yellow, and finally to the white region. The color temperature of a light source is regarded as the temperature of a Planckian black-body radiator that has the same chromaticity coordinates.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE), University of Maryland, Building 89, Room 1103, 20742, College Park, MD, USA

    Michael Pecht, Diganta Das & Moon-Hwan Chang

Authors
  1. Michael Pecht
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  2. Diganta Das
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  3. Moon-Hwan Chang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Moon-Hwan Chang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Philips Research Emeritus, Nuenen, The Netherlands

    Clemens J.M. Lasance

  2. MicReD Unit Budapest XI, Infopark D, Mentor Graphics Mechanical Analysis Divi, Budapest XI, Infopark D, Hungary

    András Poppe

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Pecht, M., Das, D., Chang, MH. (2014). Introduction to LED Thermal Management and Reliability. In: Lasance, C., Poppe, A. (eds) Thermal Management for LED Applications. Solid State Lighting Technology and Application Series, vol 2. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5091-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5091-7_1

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