During the operation of an LED array, its thermal and optical performances are always not equal to the superposition of the individual LED's characteristics because of a significant thermal coupling effect between the arrays. Based on this, this paper proposes an electrical–photo-thermal model, with considering both junction temperature and luminous flux, to predict the both the thermal and optical performances of LED arrays operated under different currents, case temperatures, and lighting methods. The junction temperature and luminous flux of a single LED operating under different driving currents and case temperature conditions are firstly collected to establish the luminous flux response surface model of a single chip. Then it is used to predict the luminous flux of an array, whose junction temperature is predicted using both thermal coupling matrix (TCM) and numerical models. Experiments verify the luminous flux of the LED array under different operation conditions and show that the proposed electrical–photo-thermal modeling can be used to predict the thermal and optical parameters of LED arrays with 95 % accuracy. Thus, it is effective for the fast prediction of the junction temperature and luminous flux of large LED systems with array structures, i.e. intelligent automotive lightings and displays.

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As a core packaging material of light color conversion, phosphor/silicone composite plays an indispensable role in light emitting diode (LED) packaging. At present, commercial LED packages mainly use blue LED chips to stimulate Yttrium Aluminum Garnet (YAG) yellow phosphor to reach a white color. However, (Ca,Sr)AlSiN 3 :Eu 2+ (CSASN) red phosphor is often added to improve the color-rendering performance given the absence of red light emission spectrum. However, inevitably harsh working conditions can induce the degradation of CSASN red phosphor, which will directly influence the mechanical properties of its silicone composites and challenge the reliability of its LED packaging. In this study, the coupling effects of temperature–humidity–sulfur on the mechanical degradation of CSASN phosphor/silicone composites were considered. The prepared CSASN phosphor/silicone test samples were first aged under high-temperature, high-humidity, and high-sulfur conditions. A series of dynamic mechanical analysis tests were then conducted to qualitatively evaluate their mechanical properties. Finally, the dynamic tension process and interfacial cracking of CSASN phosphor/silicone composites were simulated by using finite element analysis with cohesive modeling. The results showed that: (1) under coupled aging conditions, the mechanical properties of the phosphor/silicone composite decreased due to the reaction of phosphor with sulfur, water, and oxygen; (2) crack initiation and propagation were most likely to occur at the edge of the crack perpendicular to the tensile direction. The debonding of particles with silicone rather than the fracture of phosphors was one of the main aspects resulting in failure mechanisms; (3) the highly concentrated and localized phosphor in the silicone matrix and the irregular shape and arrangement of phosphor particles generated cracks in the phosphor/silicone composite.@en

Ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (UV LEDs) play an important role in inactivating novel coronavirus pneumonia, but the lack of rapid lifetime prediction can easily cause untimely failure detection, long product development cycles, and high costs. This study predicts the lifetime of UV LEDs based on the long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network (RNN). First, the equipment setup was designed to conduct an aging test to obtain a predicted length of life for the UV LED samples using a Weibull distribution. Next, LSTM RNN was employed to predict the lifetime of the UV LEDs based on the radiation power degradation. The results were then compared with those from nonlinear least squares (NLS) regression recommended by the IESNA TM-21 industry standard. Finally, the robustness of the two methods was analyzed by changing the starting times of the predictions. The results showed that the LSTM RNN proposed in this letter reveals not only a 29.7% lower lifetime prediction error compared with the NLS regression, but also a more stable robustness. Thus, the LSTM RNN method is found to be more accurate and more robust in predicting the lifetime of UV LEDs.

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Modern power electronics has the increased demands in current density and high-temperature reliability. However, these performance factors are limited due to the die attach materials used to affix power dies microchips to electric circuitry. Although several die attach materials and methods exist, nanosilver sintering technology has received much attention in attaching power dies due to its superior high-temperature reliability. This paper investigated the sintering properties of nanosilver film in double-side sintered power packages. X-ray diffraction results revealed that the size of nanosilver particles increased after pressure-free sintering. Compared with the pressure-free sintered nanosilver particles, the 5-MPa sintered particles showed a higher density. When increasing sintering pressure from 5 to 30 MPa, the shear strength of the sintered package increased from 8.71 to 86.26 MPa. When sintering at pressures below 20 MPa, the fracture areas are mainly located between the sintered Ag layer and the surface metallization layer on the fast recovery diode (FRD) die. The fracture occurs through the FRD die and the metallization layer on the bottom molybdenum substrate when sintering at 30 MPa.

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With the popularity and widespread application of high-power light-emitting diode (LED) in lighting industry, its reliability has gradually become one of research focuses.The failure of gold bonding wires in the traditional LED package has been a critical bottleneck that restricts its reliability. In this paper, the failure mechanism of LED under cyclically electrical loading is firstly identified through both gold bonding wire mechanical simulation and power cycling test experiment, which is the fatigue fracture of gold bonding wire. Then, two lifetime prediction methods, the acceleration factor extraction method based on current acceleration model and the strain-based Coffin-Manson analytical method, are established and verified with experimental results. The results show that the lifetime prediction accuracy of the proposed methods is high and they can achieve a fast and accurate reliability assessment for high-power LEDs with wire-bonding packaging technology.

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High reliable packaging materials are needed for electronics when they work at harsh environments. Among which, the nanosilver material has been widely studied and applied in power electronics due to its low processing temperature and high reliability. This paper investigates the bonding properties of nanosilver sintered hermetic cavity. There are two kinds of lids used in this study, including copper lid and silicon lid. The X-ray and C-Mode Scanning Acoustic Microscopy (C-SAM) results revealed that delamination tended to happen in Cu lid sintered cavity as the recovery of deformed Cu lid was hindered by sintered dense Ag layer. However, no delamination or cracks were found in Si lid sintered cavity. Finite element analysis (FEA) method was used to investigate the effects of lid materials on the stress distribution of lid. The results indicated that the Cu lid sintered cavity showed a much higher stress than the Si lid sintered cavity under the sintering parameters of 250 °C and 10 MPa. There is no obvious change in the stress distribution areas on Cu lid with the increasing of pressures from 5 to 30 MPa. However, the distribution area of stress on Si lid expanded obviously only when the sintering pressure increased to 30 MPa. With the increase of sintering pressures from 5 to 30 MPa, the maximum stresses on Cu lid are almost the same, while increasing trend was found on Si lid.@en

High-power light-emitting diode (LED) chip-scale packages (CSPs) prepared by the flip-chip technology have become one of the most promising light sources. The die attach solder layer always plays an important role in heat dissipation, mechanical support, and electronic conductivity. Among different types of solder materials, Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305) solder alloy shows its great competitiveness on solderability and mechanical properties for the interconnection of high-power LED CSPs. However, reliability problems caused by voids in the SAC305 solder limit its wide application in the high-power LED chip-scale packaging process. Existence of the voids has been considered as one of the major issues causing chip-on-substrate level reliability problems in microelectronic and optoelectronic devices. In this paper, mechanical and thermal properties of SAC305 solder layers with arbitrary voids used in high-power LED CSPs are studied with both finite-element simulations and experiments. The results show that void size and void position within the solder layer are the two most critical issues on the shear strength of interconnection and the chip-on-substrate level thermal distribution in high-power LED CSPs.

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Due to low power consumption, long lifetime and many other advantages, Light-emitting Diode (LED) has increased dramatically all over the world. Chip Scale Package (CSP) LED is a new LED package with small size, high current, and high reliability. For the CSP LED with smaller size and lower thermal resistance, phosphors and silicone are usually combined as the phosphors/silicone composite and prepared by using a high temperature cure process. However, for those CSPs which are not sufficiently cured, their reliability under a harsh environment (e.g. high temperatures and high humidity) will obviously decrease. In this study, the influence of temperature and ultraviolet light on the cure process of phosphor/silicone composites is studied and an optimal cure process is extracted accordingly. According to the cure experiment under different conditions, the results show that ultraviolet light and phosphor can promote the cure reaction of silicone. With the increase of ultraviolet light intensity and phosphor mass fraction, the cure rate of the silicone and phosphor/silicone composite is greatly increased as well.

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Color stability is of major concern for LED-based products. Currently, much effort is done on lumen maintenance, and for color shift, no agreed method currently exists, be it from testing or from prediction side. To investigate the physics of color shift, we present experiments of each individual part failure of each individual part that are present in LED-based products. In order to develop a color shift prediction method, it is imperative to investigate the color shift contribution by each individual part. We present a new method to predict color shift on a system level, which we named the view factor approach. We compare this prediction method with experiments on luminaire level to conclude that we have taken satisfactory first steps in the field of color shift predictions for LED-based systems.@en

As one of solid state lighting sources, wafer-level chip scale Light Emitting Diode (LED) packages has gained much attention, because of its compact size, high power and high optical performance. For this package to be effective, the solder layer plays the critical role in heat dissipation, mechanical support and electrical conductivity. Among all types of solder materials, Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305) solder alloy is considered as one of best chip-attachment candidates due to its acceptable cost, good solderability, and favorable shear strength. However, such solder connections are prone to fatigue over time due to thermal or power cycling. This paper models the wafer level chip scale LEDs soldered on both aluminum oxide and aluminum substrates with SAC305 solder alloy. Thermal cycling conditions are simulated to assess the fatigue damage of the solder interconnection. Von Mises stress and plastic work density are utilized to represent the fatigue damage per cycle by using finite element analysis (FEA) method. Important design considerations include the effects of LED chip substrate, thickness of the solder interconnections, void ratio in the solder connections and PCB substrate. The result is a set of fatigue damage accumulation metrics.

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In this paper, an integrated LED lamp with an electrolytic capacitor-free driver is considered to study the coupling effects of both LED and driver's degradations on lamp's lifetime. An electrolytic capacitor-less buck-boost driver is used. The physics of failure (PoF) based electronic thermal simulation is carried out to simulate the lamp's lifetime in three different scenarios: Scenario 1 considers LED degradation only, Scenario 2 considers the driver degradation only, and Scenario 3 considers both degradations from LED and driver simultaneously. When these two degradations are both considered, the lamp's lifetime is reduced by about 22% compared to the initial target of 25,000 h. The results of Scenario 1 and 3 are close to each other. Scenario 2 gives erroneous results in terms of luminous flux as the LED's degradation over time is not taken into consideration. This implies that LED's degradation must be taken into considerations when LED and driver's lifetimes are comparable.

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By solving the problem of very long test time on reliability qualification for Light-emitting Diode (LED) products, the accelerated degradation test with a thermal overstress at a proper range is regarded as a promising and effective approach. For a comprehensive survey of the application of step-stress accelerated degradation test (SSADT) in LEDs, the thermal, photometric, and colorimetric properties of two types of LED chip scale packages (CSPs), i.e., 4000 °K and 5000 °K samples each of which was driven by two different levels of currents (i.e., 120 mA and 350 mA, respectively), were investigated under an increasing temperature from 55 °C to 150 °C and a systemic study of driving current effect on the SSADT results were also reported in this paper. During SSADT, junction temperatures of the test samples have a positive relationship with their driving currents. However, the temperature-voltage curve, which represents the thermal resistance property of the test samples, does not show significant variance as long as the driving current is no more than the sample's rated current. But when the test sample is tested under an overdrive current, its temperature-voltage curve is observed as obviously shifted to the left when compared to that before SSADT. Similar overdrive current affected the degradation scenario is also found in the attenuation of Spectral Power Distributions (SPDs) of the test samples. As used in the reliability qualification, SSADT provides explicit scenes on color shift and correlated color temperature (CCT) depreciation of the test samples, but not on lumen maintenance depreciation. It is also proved that the varying rates of the color shift and CCT depreciation failures can be effectively accelerated with an increase of the driving current, for instance, from 120 mA to 350 mA. For these reasons, SSADT is considered as a suitable accelerated test method for qualifying these two failure modes of LED CSPs.@en

The spectral power distribution (SPD) is considered as the figureprint of a light emitting diode (LED). Based on the analysis on its SPD, a method to predict both lumen depreciation and color shift for the phosphor converted white LEDs (pc-LEDs) is proposed in this paper. First, the entire SPD of a pc-LED is predicted by superimposing two asymmetric double sigmoidal (Asym2sig) models, which represent the decomposed blue light and phosphor converted light peaks, respectively. For a better understanding of how the SPD model affects the photometric and colorimetric characteristics of a pc-LED, a sensitivity study of the SPD parameters is then performed on its luminous flux Φ, color coordinates CIE1976( u′, v′). Second, the evolutionary process of the SPD is predicted for a pc-LED with the color temperature as 3000 K under degradation testing. And based on these predicted SPDs, the drift curves of Φ, u′, v′, and du′ v′are further predicted. Finally, lifetimes of the pc-LED due to lumen depreciation and color shift are estimated simultaneously from the predicted Φ and du′ v′ drift curves.

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Mid-power LED packages are now widely used in many indoor illumination applications due to several advantages. Temperature stress, humidity stress and current stress were experimentally designed and performed to accelerate the color shift of mid-power LED packages and color shift mechanisms have been discussed based on the color shift results obtained from measurements. Conclusions could be drawn:

Linear function fitting demonstrates a good linear relationship between color shift (Δu′ Δv′) and aging time almost for all the aging conditions. We can extrapolate the color shift Δu′ and Δv′ based on the fitted regression equations and then make the prediction for the total color shift Δu′v′.

Current stress can induce a different failure mode. Peak intensity reduction analysis reveals that the current stress accelerates the degradation of LED die.

Humidity test induced a substantial color shift both in u′ and v′. The u′ has an increased degradation rate after aging of 3000 h at 85%RH & 85 °C, there should be different degradation mechanisms during the whole humidity test. The molecular structure decomposition of silicone plates and then follows the silicone carbonization due to the long-term (3000 h) accumulated high localized temperature aging.@en

The objective of this study is to quantitatively evaluate the impacts of LED components on the overdriving reliability of high power white LED chip scale packages (CSPs). The reliability tests under room temperature are conducted over 1000 h in this study on CSP LEDs with overdriving currents. A novel method is proposed to investigate the impact of various components, including blue die, phosphor layer, and substrate, on the lumen depreciation of CSP LEDs after aging test. The electro-optical measurement results show that the overdriving current can lead to both massive light output degradation and significant color shift of CSP LEDs. The quantitative analysis results show that the phosphor layer is the major contributor to the failure in early period aging test. For the long-term reliability, the degradations of phosphor and reflectivity of substrate contribute significantly on lumen depreciation. The proposed reliability assessment method with overdriving loadings can be usefully implemented for LED manufacturers to make a cost- and effective-decision before mass production.@en

In this study, an electro-optical simulation method is developed to predict the light intensity distribution and luminous flux of an in-house fabricated GaN based blue LED chip. The entire modeling process links an electrical simulation with ANSYS and optical simulation with LightTools, by assuming a proportional relation between the distributed current density and light emission energy on the multiple quantum well (MQW) layer. Experimental results show that the proposed simulation method can give a good prediction on the light intensity distribution for a semi-packaged GaN based blue LED chip. Further analysis on the simulation results reveals that an increase of at most 8% of the luminous flux can be achieved when the current density is controlled to evenly distribute on the MQW layer whereas the chip structure and electro pattern remains the same.

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According to the requirements on minimizing the package size, guaranteeing the performance uniformity and improving the manufacturing efficiency in LEDs, a Chip Scale Packaging (CSP) technology has been developed to produce white LED chips by impressing a thin phosphor film on LED blue chips. In this paper, we prepared two types of phosphor-converted white LED CSPs with high color rendering index (CRI > 80, CCT ~ 3000 K and 5000 K) by using two mixed multicolor phosphor materials. Then, a series of testing and simulations were conducted to characterize both short- and long-term performance of prepared samples. A thermal analysis through both IR thermometry and electrical measurements and thermal simulation were conducted first to evaluate chip-on-board heat dissipation performance. Next, the luminescence mechanism of multicolor phosphor mixtures was studied with the spectral power distribution (SPD) simulation and near-field optical measurement. Finally, the extracted features of SPDs and electrical current-output power (I-P) curves measured before and after a long-term high temperature accelerated aging test were applied to analyze the degradation mechanisms. The results of this study show that: 1) The thermal management for prepared CSP samples provides a safe usage condition for packaging materials at ambient temperature; 2) The Mie theory with Monte-Carlo ray-tracing simulation can be used to simulate the SPD of Pc-white LEDs with mixed multicolor phosphors; 3) The degradation mechanisms of Pc-white LEDs can be determined by analyzing the extracted features of SPDs collected after aging.@en

With the expanding application of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the color quality of white LEDs has attracted much attention in several color-sensitive application fields, such as museum lighting, healthcare lighting and displays. Reliability concerns for white LEDs are changing from the luminous efficiency to color quality. However, most of the current available research on the reliability of LEDs is still focused on luminous flux depreciation rather than color shift failure. The spectral power distribution (SPD), defined as the radiant power distribution emitted by a light source at a range of visible wavelength, contains the most fundamental luminescence mechanisms of a light source. SPD is used as the quantitative inference of an LED's optical characteristics, including color coordinates that are widely used to represent the color shift process. Thus, to model the color shift failure of white LEDs during aging, this paper first extracts the features of an SPD, representing the characteristics of blue LED chips and phosphors, by multi-peak curve-fitting and modeling them with statistical functions. Then, because the shift processes of extracted features in aged LEDs are always nonlinear, a nonlinear state-space model is then developed to predict the color shift failure time within a self-adaptive particle filter framework. The results show that: (1) the failure mechanisms of LEDs can be identified by analyzing the extracted features of SPD with statistical curve-fitting and (2) the developed method can dynamically and accurately predict the color coordinates, correlated color temperatures (CCTs), and color rendering indexes (CRIs) of phosphor-converted (pc)-white LEDs, and also can estimate the residual color life@en

As a widespread application of high power phosphor-converted white light emitting diodes (pc-WLEDs) with long lifetime and color-consistence, the highly reliable phosphor/silicone composite, one of core materials used for light-conversion, working under severe operation conditions has become increasingly necessary. This paper selects three widely used monochromatic phosphors (Aluminates, Silicates and Nitrides based) as well as a pristine silicone to determine the potential interaction effects in their phosphor/silicone composites operated under different environments. Firstly, the transient thermal quenching and long-term high temperature ageing tests are used to investigate the thermal stabilities of both monochromatic phosphor powders and phosphor/silicone composites. Furthermore, the degradation mechanisms of phosphor/silicone composites aged under the high temperature & blue light exposure and high temperature & high humidity conditions are studied by considering the interaction effect. The results show that: (1) the thermal stabilities of different phosphors are different and the phosphor/silicone composites have more severe thermal quenching effects than those of their corresponding phosphor powders, but with the similar degradation trends; (2) the blue light irradiation can deteriorate silicone which is related to the photolysis effect; (3) the moisture can accelerate the degradation of phosphor/silicone composites because the change of pH condition, owing to the dissolution of phosphor powders in moisture, can degrade both phosphors and silicone.@en

PMMA material is widely used in LED-based luminaires due to several advantages such as excellent optical transparency, durability against radiation, surface hardness (scratch free), rigidity and strength and can be completely recycled. However, few studies have been reported on the colour shift and failure mechanisms caused by this type of material. This paper experimentally investigated PMMA materials with different aging conditions. The following conclusions could be drawn. (1) Discolouration was not observed for any sample subjected to aging of 85 °C for 5000 h, or with additional blue light irradiation for 5000 h, or with additional humidity of 85%RH for 5000 h, or even with aging of 100 °C for 3000 h. (2) The specimen subjected to aging of 150 °C for 360 h has a surface discoloration and has a significant wavelength dependent degradation in the transmission spectrum caused by oxidation. The specimen with aging of 100 °C for 3000 h has a less oxidation, although no significant transmission spectrum reduction was observed. (3) Using such aged specimen as a diffuser mounted on a LED-based luminaire, the radiant flux peak intensity in the blue light area has a more severe reduction than that in the yellow light area, which results in a reduction of the radiant flux intensity ratio of blue light to yellow light and hence induces the colour shift to yellow. The colour shift investigated is 0.005, very close to the general failure criterion of 0.007, while the lumen decay is 10.2%, far less than the failure criterion of 30%.@en