The History of LED Chips

LED history

People have understood the basic knowledge that semiconductor materials can generate light 50 years ago. In 1962, Nick Holonyak Jr. of General Electric Company developed the first practical application of visible light-emitting diodes. LED is the abbreviation of English light-emitting diode, its basic structure is a piece of electroluminescent semiconductor material, placed on a leaded shelf, and then sealed with epoxy resin around, that is, solid encapsulation, so it can play To protect the internal core wire, so the LED has the good seismic performance.

Initially, LEDs were used as indicator light sources for instruments and meters. Later, LEDs of various light colors were widely used in traffic signal lights and large-area display screens, resulting in good economic and social benefits. Take a 12-inch red traffic light as an example. In the United States, a long-life, low-efficiency 140-watt incandescent lamp was originally used as the light source, which produces 2000 lumens of white light. After passing through the red filter, the light loss is 90%, leaving only 200 lumens of red light. In the newly designed lamp, Lumileds uses 18 red LED light sources, which consumes a total of 14 watts, including circuit losses, to produce the same light effect. Automotive signal lights are also an important field of LED light source applications.

Principle of the LED chip

LED (Light Emitting Diode) is a solid-state semiconductor device that can directly convert electricity into light. The heart of the LED is a semiconductor chip, one end of the chip is attached to a bracket, one end is the negative pole, and the other end is connected to the positive pole of the power supply so that the entire chip is encapsulated by epoxy resin. The semiconductor wafer is composed of two parts, one part is a P-type semiconductor, in which holes dominate, and the other end is an N-type semiconductor, which is mainly electrons. But when these two semiconductors are connected, a "P-N junction" is formed between them. When the current acts on the chip through the wire, electrons will be pushed to the P area, where the electrons and holes recombine and then emit energy in the form of photons. This is the principle of LED light emission. The wavelength of light is the color of light, which is determined by the material forming the P-N junction.

The above information is provided by the 40w LED chip factory.