Phase out of incandescent light bulbs in EU

As of September 1, 2009, the phase out of incandescent light bulbs is officially underway in the European Union with a ban on the sale and importation of 100 W and higher bulbs.

The European Energy Commission stated that the banned lamps will not be removed from shop shelves on September 1, and that the retailers are allowed to sell their existing stock of incandescent 100 W bulbs.

The EU plans to gradually phase out conventional incandescent and halogen bulbs from the market by the end of 2012. Compact fluorescent bulbs and LEDs are the two main alternatives.

The legal limitation on import of the bulbs will generate a black market and smuggling operation to bring them in. It will also create a huge surge in sales legally as people stock up on high wattage bulbs of 100W. till the embargo goes into effect. There is already a big sales for the Incandescent light bulbas people started to Collect it for memorial purpose and for reserve usage. They should stick to encouraging development instead of mandating it.

In fact the world two largest LED makers Osram and Philips has the biggest market share for conventional incandescent Light bulbs, every year, they are closing their factories and probably in 5 years time, the LED light bulb will be the major product in lighting comparing with Incandescent light bulb. However the speed of such migration of LED into the lighting industry are depending on these big players : Nichia, Osram, Lumileds, Cree, Seoul Semi, Everlight...Etc.

Who are more or less in controling of the prices and amount of the High Performance HBLED.

Litefast 360 degrees Display

Litefast 360° displays are multi-functional multimedia LED displays for advertising, digital signage, real-time information and entertainment. Not least because of their eye-catching shape Litefast 360° displays are out-of-the-ordinary presentation objects in themselves.

They start up at the click of a mouse and communicate all kinds of multimedia information in an exciting presentation format.. The cylindrical display can be viewed from all sides, attracting three times as many visitors, customers and guests as a conventional flat screen. Poster areas protected by acrylic glass provide room for print advertising or for harmonising the Litefast 360° display to its surroundings. As a result Litefast 360° displays offer considerably more than the usual LCD or plasma flatscreens. Best for Airport, Restaurant, Cinema, bus and MTR Station for commercial display.

Kinoton GmbH was founded in Munich to service local cinemas. Just one year later, Philips entrusted the young company with the German sales rights for their then very popular, state-of-the-art cinema projectors. Hans-Peter Zoller was involved right from the beginning, as an employee at first . Ten years later he and his wife gained full ownership of the company.

From 1955 on, Kinoton's own sales and service offices were opened throughout Germany. In the early 60's, projection equipment, switchboards and curtain machines were produced in a small workshop in downtown Munich. This was the decade when Kinoton developed the platter system, which revolutionized the cinema industry and won Kinoton their first Academy Scientific and Engineering Award.

Sylvania LED for Car Tail Light

Sylvania Special LED Design

Standard tail light system with red and amber lenses.
The same tail light system redesigned to use the LED bulb.

The assembly is colorless in the unlit state.

When lit, the LED bulb generates the required signal function color.

SYLVANIA has introduced an innovative new standardized automotive light source. The LED bulb is designed for use in reflectors systems designed for it. It cannot be used as a direct replacement for current incandescent signal, brake, or reverse light applications.

The LED can ahve the following design features:

1.Creates new styling opportunities for lit and unlit condition, including high-tech, clear lens, no color, no lamp inside appearance
2. Different optical solutions possible via different reflector designs
3. Dual Intensity operation: Brake / turn functions plus running light

4. Faster rise time - approximately 140 times faster than incandescent sources: creates an additional 24 feet of stopping distance at 65 mph
5. Draws only 15% of the energy required to power an incandescent bulb: 4.3W compared to 27W

OSRAM SYLVANIA focuses on developing the most advanced LED modules and drivers available and supplying them to their OEM customers. They use Osram LED on their fixtures.

Sony to sell his TV plant to Foxconn

Reported on 1 Sep 2009, Sony Corp. has agreed to sell its main television factory in North America to a Foxconn as it struggles to cut costs and stem massive losses. Sony will sell 90 percent of its stake in Sony Baja California, which is located in Tijuana .

Foxconn is World No.1 EMS (Electronics Manufacturing Service) with Revenue of 61.8B in 2008 with CAGR of >50% since 1998. Foxconn is the only company consistently ranked among top ten in the Business Week IT100 since 2002.

Flextronics is the 2nd largest EMS company in the world.

Who knows if one day Foxconn will head up with direct competition with Flextronics for LED TV in the Market. Flextronics had just been appointed by LG for manufacturing their 19", 22" 26", 32" and 37" TV.

One Stop Solution for LED Manufacturing

Only one company in the World can provide us one stop solution for LED manufacturing equipment.

As they supply bare die sorting machine, Die bonder of various process types such as Epoxy, Direct Eutectic, Flip Chip TS process for various LED chip attach,
Gold ball wire bonder for horizontal and vertical LED devices.

The latest iHawkxtreme is of the fastest wire bonder for LED. It was well recognized as the standard wire bonder for high throughput LED manufacturing environment.

Down the process they have solution on phosphor jetting, Testing and sorting solution for LED of different package TopLED, SideView, Ceramic base HBLED, with various process requirement of say Bowl feeder input, LED on wafer form, output with Tape and Reel or to be sorted on Mylar on film frame for sake of traceability required by Automobile and General illumination industry.

There is certain advance if we use one stop solution. There is minimum tools investment as all equipment can utilize the same tooling such as magazines and carrier. Minimum, investment for spare part as all machines are using the similar modules of control and Motion drivers!

An unique operational pattern as the machine are using same human interface for operation.

Simplify is the key for a streamed line process of Today Hi volume LED manufacturing by going through one supplier, consideration on administration, Single supplier training programme, spare part management, process uniqueness, On line Production System management.

This Company was found in 1975. It is ASM!

China International Optoelectronic Exposition

iHawk V ASM Gold Ball Wire bonder for Vertical LED Lamps

ShenZhen Convention and exhibition centre

The China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) is a worldwide renowned exhibition, which presents the most advanced optoelectronic technologies and innovations.

The CIOE 2009 expects around 2,100 exhibitors to showcase products on 70,000 sqm from September 6-9. During the four days, more than 85,000 professional visitors will attend the exhibition.


It is supported by all relevant Chinese government bodies, scientific academies, trade associations, and by domestic as well as international key players of the industry.

Key LED Exhibitors:
OSRAM, DOMINANT, OASIS, COTCO, LUXPIA, MOKSAN, EDISON, BRIGHTEK, HP LIGHTING, WAITRONY, ELS, CT TECH, SHIN-ETSU, DENKI KAGAKU, ASM, NIHON GARTER, LUMITECH, CHANG-YU, WECON, LIANCHUANJIANHE, LAMP, HUAHAI etc.

ASM, world No. 1 Semiconductor equipment manufacturer makes her debut of the following equipment.

AD860
New Die bonder that can hanle 8” dia substrate as on the Work holder, good for PCB, Ceramic Panel or Si Type Substrate for LED bonding.

iHawk Xtreme is ASM's latest Gold ball Wire bonder which has a higher UPH that can outperform the strongest rivals in the Market by min. 15% for LED application.


Hawk-V- Gold bal wire bonder for Vertical LED lamps , 60 ms wire bonding speed, 10% smaller footprint, 0 down time due to magazine changes.

PhononDS520 – A Jetting phosphor application dispensing Machine, 50K UPH on vertical LED phosphor coating application.



SLS230T- test and sort machine for Top LED device with bowl feeder input, UPH is typically 18K for 3014, 3020, 3528 Device.


SLT400 – A high speed taping machine with Bowl feeder input , UPH 40K for 5252 Top LED device.


The Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center was designed by the German architects GMP with the lastest exhibition facilities. It is located in the downtown area of Shenzhen. It is connected to all major transportation systems and throw stone distance away from all parts of the city. Many four- and four-star-hotels and top restaurants are situated within walking distance.

Map Sorting of Package LEDs onto frames

ASM MS899DLA is a high speed map sorter machine especially designed for handling ceramic based LED with dome lens. Input is a cassette of film frame carrying the package LED on the film frame.

The reason is that the LED has to have tracebility up to die level, if that is not placed on mylar in a mapped format, there is no way to trace the LED to the die batch form the Wafer.

The up stream process is either a Panel tester using Integration sphere or a Package LED tester AS899 (ASM’s).

MS899DLA is a fully automatic map sorter machine with Auto cassette handler and max.
120 Bin grade of film frame each represent one specified Bin grade of binned LEDs.

There is a wafer bar code reader to read the lot bar codes or using 2D matrix code camera to read, identify and pull pout the right wafer map from the network for the film frame in process.
The UPH is typically 4,200 for 3mm x3 mm package LED with dome lens.

The Collet is designed not to have any contact on the surface of the dome to minimize scratches.
Typical Cycle time is 430ms for 3 mm x 3mm x 1.6 mm LEDs.

This machine is commonly used for many LED Big players for sorting out their package LED onto 100 bin grades.

Downwards process is to pass the binned wafer on Taping machine LPT08 for putting the package LED onto tape and reel.

Yike Bike

The Yike Bike has today been wooing Europeans on German streets as its developers try to sell their new mini-farthing cycle to the European market.

Inventor Grant Ryan said he hoped its European debut would spark interest ahead of a major trade fair later this week.

The New Zealand carbon fibre Yike Bike can run for 10km after a 30 minute charge, 10Kg in weight , install in 15 Sec, easy to control, LED lighting design. A green toy for us? We have to reserve for one. Price? May be in the range of USD$5,000.

My Friend Leo is the No. 1 HK people on the order reserve List.

I am sure that there will be newer design from China selling at about USD$900 in April 2010.

Let’s see

Small and Big Chip Design and efficacy

Blue represents the optical power and Purple indicates the Electrical power

LED efficacy is 25%, 75% of the electrical energy will be converted to heat energy, however when the smaller LED is having smaller power with say 20mA of current passing through, they efficacy could be as higher 55%.



There will be 55% of optical power Lumens output and 45% of energy will be dissipated as heat energy. however when the current increased say to 350mA, the efficacy can be about 25%. 75% of the electrical energy will be dissipated as heat energy which is a waste!

So we can see that there is a big different in LED design on the East and the West.
As most of the LED in Japanese Maker are using comparative small chip 0.2mm x 0.2 mm to 0.29mm X 0.29mm current such as 20-50mA range by using a number of small Chip to create more optical Lumens. Such design in fact as much a higher energy conversion than driving the LED at much a high current say 350mA or more, as when chip is bigger current .


But most of the US and or European design will be using 350mA as standard current reference for driving their LED. Such as K2, Rebel, XRE, XP, Oslon...

As for Japanese design such as Citizen, Sharp, we can see that they ar using a lot of LED from 10-20 pcs each of them are driving at smaller current, there will be a lot of manufacturing process as there will be multiple bonding on Die bonding and Multiple wires.


But the advantage is better energy saving, an some of them are connected in parallel, if there is one strand of LED chain is failure, there are still having some of the LED strands continue to light up. So as a reliability sense that is better. Whereas the other European Design will be black out of the LED is failed! So there thermal management of the current UHBLED will be an important engineering challenge for most of the LED players using big chip say 1mm x 1mm or bigger.

As we know if we have the best chip on hand, the final product reliability will be much depending on how low we can maintain the Junction Temperature. In any case we should design such a way to have a lowest Junction temperature of the Chip. Say if you can have a room temperature junction temperature, that is a dream case. And if you can maintain the Junction temperature at 85% m that is very good already, in worse case the junction temperature such not be higher than 125 Deg C.

As what highlight before if the temperature of the Chip is lower the life tine of the LED will be increased. Say form Rebel specification sheet if we can reduce 5 degrees from Junction temperate of 135 Degree C to 130 Degrees C, the life time of the Reel will be increased by 18,000 hours!!

If one day we can have a say Copper bas material and a very good of bonding connection material such as Solder (lead free is preferred) the Bond Line thickness is properly optimized for best CTE between the chip say EZ1000 and the Copper material. I think that is a very good design for low Junction temperature, as Copper is very good at heat energy conduction, and it is of low cost as comparing with AIN or Al2O3 ceramic substrates.



That can be a powerful LED… and if we can have very high efficacy Phosphor material and a good design of Lens, we may be able to create s very efficient LED with High Efficacy, good thermal conductivity, low cost as Solder is cheaper than Epoxy, or gold tin Eutectic process. However, the only concern is how good that it could sustain the reflow temperature say 260 deg C for two times. Will the Solder cause any delamination of the LED and the Substrates?

Why there is such a trend for Standard UHBLED footprint 3mmx3mm?

Due to the market need for smaller package LED with more power emission, there is a trend of smaller packages that comes with 3mm x3 mm ceramic base UHBLED of more than 1 W in the market.

Rebel, XRE, XP and Oslon and more to come in months from these big player Lumileds, Cree and Osram.

The key advantages are that they can put more LEDs in a smaller area to emit more light.

They can have a comparatively smaller optic or smaller light guide for these light rays to emit.

They can have tape and reel format on these product for SMT mounting.

Final fixture can have more power with Multi-LED configuration especially for Illumination.

They can use automatic Surface mount machine for board level insertion.

The smaller Footprint will use less material and good for cost down on the LEDs Price!

The Huge K2 Type of LED will soon be phased out.