While LED lighting brings the promise of more light and less energy use, they still create a proportional amount of heat. Back in March, 2010 we had blogged about this very point in our post entitled, “LED Lighting Needs Good Thermal Design For Long Life“. In that post we noted that:
- LED Lights are moving into the 35W range giving them almost blinding brightness and the commensurate is hot
- LED’s are driven by electronics and that means IC’s. The basic thermal building block here is junction temperature. And that has to be managed somehow for the electronics and therefor the light to have a reasonable service life.
Tim Haas of Avent Abacus, has some additional thoughts on this topic from his article in Electronics Weekly entitled, “LED Lighting Systems Get Thermal Management“. Among his important points he notes”
- The effectiveness of pre-formed heat sinks for LED is dependent on the maximum allowable junction temperature, the design of the heat sink and the ambient temperature.
- Techniques such as piped heat sinks are being augmented by the introduction of another new method which employs a ‘heat sheet’. Heat sheets are made from a graphite compound which is pliable and can be formed into various shapes, almost like a sheet of paper.
Tim’s article is a quick read and worth our reader’s time as he does a nice job summing up the current LED Lighting thermal issues and highlights some of the current and new techniques necessary to solve them.
ATS is holding a webinar on LED Lighting and Thermal Management on
Thursday, September 23, 2010 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT entitled, “LED Thermal Management in Commercial and Consumer Lighting Applications” All of our readers are encouraged to join!
