Core tips

Semiconductor-LED lighting with LED as the core, in recent years in the Beijing Olympic Games, the 60th anniversary of the National Day military parade ceremony, the Shanghai World Expo has frequently shine, the beautiful lighting effects make people wonder. With the significant advantages of high efficiency, energy saving and environmental protection, a vigorous LED tide is rapidly sweeping the Chinese lighting industry.

At the "Shijiazhuang International Semiconductor Lighting Application and Standards Testing and Innovation Forum" held on September 3, well-known experts from home and abroad gathered in the provincial capital and stood at the forefront, discussed the general trend of semiconductor lighting industry development, analyzed the bottleneck of industrial development, and guided the LED industry. More benign development will allow LED green energy products to fly into the homes of ordinary people as soon as possible.

Lighting market's "new darling"

LED is known as "green energy," the product does not contain mercury, lead and other substances harmful to the environment and the human body, at the same brightness, power consumption is only 1/10 of an ordinary incandescent lamp, life can be extended 50 times. Some experts predict that by 2015, the annual electricity savings can reach 40 billion kilowatt-hours per hour through the promotion of LED, which is equivalent to annual carbon dioxide emission reduction of 40 million tons.

With the advancement and maturity of technology, LED industry has developed rapidly in the past two years, becoming the "new darling" of the lighting market. Especially in the field of LCD TVs, LED display has become the mainstream of the market. According to a set of data provided by Peng Wanhua, deputy head of the Semiconductor Technology Standards Working Group of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, global lighting market sales in 2010 will reach US$120.4 billion, of which LED light sources will account for 16% of lighting and will reach US$10 billion. LED manufacturing equipment, the international supply giant of the MOCVD machine, Veeco, pointed out at the forum that LED will account for 80% of the LCD TV market in the next three years.

“Developing semiconductor lighting is one of the most realistic options for China to transform its economic development mode and cultivate new growth points.” Wu Ling, Secretary General of National Semiconductor Lighting Engineering R&D and Industry Alliance, pointed out that this is determined by the three characteristics of the LED industry. LED has lower energy consumption in the whole life cycle of material preparation, product manufacturing and application than traditional lighting, and has great advantages of low energy consumption; as an important part of manufacturing, semiconductor lighting is for information display, digital home appliances, and automobiles. , Equipment, raw materials and other fields have a strong lead; In addition, semiconductor lighting also has the characteristics of technology and labor-intensive, creating a large number of job opportunities, but also has a good comprehensive benefits.

Trends: Expanding Non-traditional Lighting

Longevity is the advantage of LED products, and it is also a weakness of the LED industry. “At present, the cost of LED products is many times higher than that of traditional lighting fixtures. Imagine that the life span of a LED bulb is ten years. Consumers may not need to replace them during this decade, but they will lose their drive to the market. power.

Participating experts believe that the application of semiconductor lighting products is not limited to the existing lighting market, with the development of future technologies will expand a large number of non-traditional lighting market. In this regard, Philips' academician of solid-state lighting and Zhang Guoan, a professor at Delft University in the Netherlands, first proposed the concept of “beyond lighting” in the world. His specific explanation for this is to combine LED lighting technology with other technologies to create new products, new applications and new markets that go beyond traditional lighting functions.

In the lecture titled “New Lighting Changing the World”, Zhang Guomin pointed out that the semiconductor lighting industry chain is an inverted triangle. The bottom of the triangle is materials and equipment, and the economic scale is limited. In the middle is the lighting product; at the top, the output value is the highest. Is the lighting application. According to the semiconductor industry, the market size of materials and equipment is approximately US$10 billion, the semiconductor component market is approximately US$25 billion, the system and application products are approximately US$110 billion, and the service industry it drives is approximately US$500 billion. .

“For the semiconductor lighting industry, if only light sources and lamps are used, the profit margin is limited. However, if it is extended to system applications and lighting solutions, the added value will be much greater. This is the direction of future industry development.” He said. LED over-ride lighting can truly realize the greatest benefit of lighting technology to human society, and create the largest new product and new market potential. In the research and development strategy, we should pay more attention to the development of non-traditional lighting functions, lighting control, system intelligence, and lighting systems and people, interaction with other systems and the environment.

The LED lighting industry is becoming the target of international capital pursuit. It is rushing to eat into this piece of cake. The world’s three biggest lighting giants, Philips, Bizarre and Osram, have begun to engage in short-to-medium war games in China. Bringing serious challenges to China's LED industry. Therefore, in the LED R & D technology, the more dominant 13th, in 2006 began to move landscape and atmospheric lighting, Water Cube, Harbin ice lights LED landscape lighting is a successful example, they recently in the factory workshop lighting, subway lighting Major progress has been made in other areas.

Breakthrough bottleneck: reduce costs

The biggest area of ​​the future LED market is the general lighting market. If it can completely replace fluorescent lamps, it is believed that there may be a potential market size of nearly 100 billion US dollars, and can be applied in more different fields.

"But in fact, if we expect that LED can completely replace the traditional light sources, there are still some difficulties," said Liu Muqing, professor at the Institute of Electric Light Sources at Fudan University. Due to the high cost and high price of LEDs, for ordinary people, LED lights are still "saving energy without saving money." It is understood that, a few years ago, the market price of LED lights was 10-20 times that of conventional light bulbs. Although the cost has decreased in recent years, prices still have a distance of 7-8 times.

How to reduce product costs has become one of the major bottlenecks for the LED industry to enter the golden development period. This is also a hot topic in the forum. Experts from the meeting put forward many professional opinions on technology research and development.

Mr. James Petter, Senior Technical Engineer of Veeco, an international supply giant of MOCVD machines, believes that in order to allow the LED market to exhibit explosive growth, LED prices must be reduced to stimulate market demand. Reducing the cost of LED epitaxy requires simultaneous consideration of yield and production capacity. The increase in MOCVD machine production capacity and the reduction in cost must be based on design. At present, the company is researching and developing newer MOCVD machines and has better yield and output, which is 4 times that of current products.

Shijiazhuang: The industrial scale needs to be expanded

In the face of fleeting market opportunities, how to continue to play the advantages of research and development, to win a place in the national LED market, the provincial capital LED industry to be thinking about issues. In response, the reporter interviewed Zhu Xiaodong, a senior engineer of the 13th Chinese Power Technology Group.

He analyzed the status quo of the development of the provincial LED industry, and believes that although the level of semiconductor technology research and development in the city is located in the domestic first tier, but the industry can not keep up. In recent years, the government has introduced a series of policies to promote the development of the LED industry, stimulate market demand, and the industrial scale has improved, but the total production volume is still small. As of the end of last year, the city's LED industry output value was 5 billion yuan. His main reason for analysis is that the market is slow to change. The reason why the southern LED lighting industry can do more is because the market feedback information is not only more, but also faster.

Zhu Xiaodong gave a simple example. At last year's semiconductor fair in Shenzhen, thirteen exhibited a successful LED technology product in 2008 that was highly concerned by the industry. Due to many factors this technology has not been put into production in the north. One month after the show, this technology appeared in many LED production lines in the south.

"We should have advanced thinking." Zhu Xiaodong believes that in the LED technology and the market constantly nurture and change the environment, so that new technologies and new products have a relatively mature market environment, both to give consumers a surprise, but also with the consumer's psychology Match the economic endurance, so as to seize the favorable opportunity, preemptively form the scale of production, and earn better profits before others have followed up.

He expects that local enterprises with strong capabilities will actively participate in this high-tech industry, increase their industrial scale through substantial investment, and promote the development of the industry with the introduction of a large number of classical projects and demonstration projects.

China: Will dominate the global semiconductor lighting market

Currently, LED lighting applications are moving from outdoor LED street lights in the past to indoor lighting applications. In addition to road lighting, tunnel lighting, China's LED lighting technology has entered the commercial, industrial, school, hotel, etc., vehicles, ships and other equipment lighting are also involved, as well as agricultural lighting, medical surgery and other special areas.

"Semiconductor lighting will be the last artificial light source discovered by mankind in the 21st century. It will replace all current artificial light sources in the future." Zhu Xiaodong highly praises this view. He said that the scale of semiconductor lighting industry is 30% each year. Speed ​​increase. In 2003, the scale of this industry in China was less than 10 billion yuan, and there were only dozens of companies. In the context of the financial crisis, 2009, the LED lighting industry rose against the market, with total sales of nearly 80 billion yuan, making China one of the fastest growing regions in the global LED industry.

The international supply giant Veeco, which is an MOCVD machine, also has full confidence in the development of China's LED lighting industry. China will be the main sales area for products. The company’s senior technical engineer, Mr. James Petter, said at the forum: “In 2010, the global demand for MOCVD machines was 7 million units, and China had 230 units. This is the fastest growing country in terms of regional demand. These new purchases The machine will accelerate the cost reduction of LED products, as long as the market demand can be stimulated, coupled with the country's supporting incentive policies, the huge potential of the LED lighting market will be developed.” He believes that according to the development of this situation, China Will lead the LED lighting market startup and growth, and become the forerunner and leader in the global semiconductor lighting market.