Advanced LED Thermal Design
Heat dissipation and thermal management has been a common issue among electronic components for many years. Increasing circuit density, advanced multi complex integrated circuits, high power diodes, and other heat generating electronic components have made thermal management a challenge for today's electronics.
In the specific case of solid state lighting, heat generation can be detrimental to both the light output as well as the actual life of the Light Emitting Diode. LED packages operate at a very high temperature creating an enormous amount of heat at the substrate surface of the light package. There are two basic criteria that must be considered when determining how to design electronic packaging for thermal management; thermal conductivity and thermal coefficients.
Thermal conductivity is important because it enables the movement of energy (heat) from electronic device (an LED package) away from the heat source to a location that can be used for heat removal.
Thermal coefficients are important because these components will actually undergo thermal expansion based on temperature |
|
and if the material cannot have the proper thermal coefficient properties the device can fail through cracking or circuit failures.
The goal in the Light-Pod fixture is to design a heat transfer methodology that would provide high thermal conductivity for heat movement, low coefficient properties for minimal expansion and a manufacturing process designed around the LED package to take advantage of these features. For many years, traditional heat sinks have been used as a means to control thermal management of electronic components. In addition, metal core silicon boards have also been used in electronic components which act as a heat transfer plate to move heat from one area to the next.
As you can see from the picture below, Light-Pod has integrated the actual sink into the structure of the fixture to design a thermal package that is constantly removing heat from the light package substrate to the outer cooling fins of the fixture body. Through a carbon substrate mounting process of the actual LED package into the custom designed heat sink frame of the fixture, the light-pod fixture will maintain a constant reduced junction temperature for the fixture in order to provide long life for the LED light source.
|
|
