Analysis of Energy Saving Technology Bottleneck in the Outbreak of LED Lighting Market

Authoritative data predict that by 2020 the global lighting market will exceed US$150 billion, an increase of 11.9% from US$134 billion in 2010. Although the overall scale does not increase significantly, the lighting product structure will change significantly.

With the increasing awareness of environmental protection, LED as a new generation of lighting technology has become the focus of attention of the whole society. With the declining prices and the dual factors of luminous efficiency and longevity, coupled with the advantages of energy saving, energy saving and environmental protection, LED lighting has ushered in the time when the market broke out. However, the independent research and development of technology is a long-standing disadvantage of China's industry. While analyzing the market trend, it analyzes many technical bottlenecks in the key equipment and important materials in the production of LED lighting products, and has a good reference value for industrial development.

1, replace the tide curtain open

Authoritative data predict that by 2020 the global lighting market will exceed US$150 billion, an increase of 11.9% from US$134 billion in 2010. Although the overall scale does not increase significantly, the lighting product structure will change significantly. Among them, the LED lighting market share will increase from about 5 billion US dollars in 2010 to 75 billion US dollars, that is, 10 times will expand 15 times. In 2014, LEDinside expects global LED lighting product shipments will grow by 68%, with an output value of 17.8 billion US dollars.

According to data from the Institute of Topology and Industrial Research in Taiwan, the penetration rate of global LED lighting is currently only 10%. By 2015 or at the latest by 2020, the penetration rate will reach 50%. In other words, in the next few years, LED lighting devices will Substantial replacement of traditional lighting fixtures. Figure 1 shows the trend of global LED lighting market penetration in recent years.

Since 2014, Europe and the United States have begun to phase out the largest 40-60W incandescent bulbs used in the civilian market, providing a favorable opportunity for the popularity of LED lighting products. This will also stimulate global LED lighting manufacturers to speed up the pace of LED lighting, and further increase the global LED lighting penetration rate. The US government’s support for LED lighting is gradually increasing, and the number of energy subsidies such as Energy Star has increased rapidly, which has led to further reduction in the price of LED lamps.

CREE and other manufacturers are optimistic about the development of the LED lighting market in 2014 and expect that the sales growth of replacement lamps will become the focus of the next business growth. In Europe where the market is relatively mature, although the large-scale subsidy policy has not been seen, its high electricity price and optical cultural differences have caused the continuous demand for commercial lighting and outdoor architectural lighting applications. In the next few years, the market will continue to show steady growth with the impact of the total ban on incandescent light bulbs.

As an industrial power in the LED field, Japan has also played a very important role in promoting the development of the world LED industry. As early as more than a decade ago, Japan had begun to implement the “21st Century Light Plan” that promoted the development and industrialization of semiconductor lighting technology, and it was one of the first countries in the world to initiate the LED industry policy.

In recent years, with the strong support of the Japanese government, the LED lighting industry has grown rapidly. At the same time, awareness of energy conservation in Japan has been rising. In particular, following the Great East Japan Earthquake, the government also proposed the goal of “low carbon society” (energy saving and carbon reduction). Among them, LED lighting products are rapidly popularized and become representatives of energy-saving products.

In addition, in LED emerging markets such as Brazil, India, Vietnam, Russia and other countries and regions, have also introduced a variety of plans and drafts to support the development of LED lighting industry. The demand for LED lighting products in these regions is clearly on the rise. The LED lighting market is growing rapidly, especially in the LED public lighting and commercial lighting markets.

A variety of data shows that in the next 1 to 3 years LED lighting will be completed from 15% to 60% penetration, a large number of LED lighting market demand will be released. A strong support policy will directly drive the rapid growth of the LED lighting market.

2, the technical bottleneck urgently need to break through

Although LED luminous efficiency has been continuously improved, there are still problems that need to be solved, such as low electro-optical conversion efficiency, poor heat dissipation performance, color rendering index of warm white LED lighting, and difficult color temperature control, which have become the development of the LED lighting industry at the current stage. bottleneck.

The output of the downstream LED industry chain is based on upstream materials. However, because the display of the material itself is not obvious, people's attention to the material is easily weakened, resulting in insufficient attention to the basic material research, resulting in insufficient input but insufficient support. It is difficult to attract relevant talents, leading to material development bottlenecks. At present, the LED industry is still based on a 50mm (2吋) or 100mm (4吋) sapphire substrate. If large-diameter silicon substrate GaN-on-Si technology can be used, it is possible to fully utilize existing technologies. The complete technology and economies of scale of the silicon crystal ecosystem have achieved the goal of reducing overall LED costs.

When comparing current 150mm (6 inch) sapphire substrates and 150mm (6 inch) wafers using AZZURRO's patented GaN-on-Si technology, more than 75% of raw material cost savings can be achieved. Although GaN-on-Si has a significant cost advantage, it has not been widely used in the LED industry due to technical difficulties. The problem is mainly due to the fact that the thermal expansion coefficients of the silicon substrate and GaN are different. During the manufacturing process, stress is generated due to the lattice misalignment between the two materials, and thus the problem of uneven bow and film thickness is formed. Uneven curvature and uneven film thickness may not only cause cracks during processing at the back end, but also lead to different peak wavelengths of the LEDs fabricated on the same wafer, increasing the risk of future binning. .

According to AZZURRO's 150mm (6-inch) GaN-on-Si wafers completed in the second quarter of 2011, average thicknesses of 6.1μm, standard deviations of 0.062μm, average peak wavelength of 451.9nm and standard deviation of 2.1nm have been achieved. Level. Development equipment is another basic guarantee for the development of LED lighting devices. The MOCVD system is an essential equipment for the production of heterostructures of LED epitaxial wafers and microwave power. With the continuous expansion of the compound semiconductor device market, the demand for MOCVD systems continues to grow, and China is almost entirely dependent on imports.

The main suppliers of MOCVD equipment in the world are AIXTRON of Germany and VEECO of the United States. The two companies offer up to 20 million RMB for a single MOCVD device. Even so, the key equipment such as the MOCVD system involves defense technology even if It is also difficult to obtain optimal performance by relying on imports.

The development of LED packaging technology has always focused on topics such as improving heat dissipation efficiency and reducing end-use costs. The use of new packaging materials, the formation of new packaging specifications, and the emergence of new packaging technologies are all aimed at reducing the unit's lumen cost while ensuring the quality level. From the perspective of the global market, the main challenge faced by the increase in the share of China's LED packaging manufacturers is still technology. In 2013, emerging technologies such as EMC stents, FlipChip, and wafer-level packaging (CSP) emerged.

Today, intellectual property has become a strategic weapon for LED companies to compete. The LED companies that entered the market first actively deployed the patent network to ensure the first-mover advantage, used intellectual property as a strategic weapon to maintain their leading edge, and blocked late-coming companies from entering the LED market. Therefore, the development of the LED lighting market is also facing a crisis of intellectual property rights. In the past 10 years, the semiconductor lighting market has grown rapidly. LED intellectual property has become the focus of competition in the international semiconductor lighting industry. Looking at the pattern of global LED intellectual property rights, the industry's core patents are still dominated by Japan's Nichia Chemical Corporation, Toyota Synthetic Corporation, Cree Inc., Philips Lumens, and OSRAM of Germany.

Although the number of LED patent applications in mainland China has increased significantly in recent years, China’s position in the global LED intellectual property structure has not been fundamentally improved. China's LED patents are mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the field, and the patents for midstream packaging and downstream applications account for 64% of the total applications. In the key technological links that concern the long-term development of the industry, there is still a lack of core patents. Judging from the types of patents, China’s LED patents are dominated by utility models and design patents. Inventive patents account for a relatively low proportion, of which domestic LED practical patents account for 59%, design patents account for 15%, and LED inventions. The patent accounted for only 26%.

3、Conclusion

LED lighting is a fast-growing market, and the market scale is rapidly increasing, but it still faces many technical challenges waiting for breakthroughs. For example, researchers and LED manufacturers have been working to reduce the loss caused by LED "light efficiency decline," but it has not been resolved. The real cause behind this phenomenon.

According to research firm ledinside, China's LED lighting product shipments in 2014 will reach 1.32 billion, an increase of 68% over 2013. Despite the continuous growth in demand for lighting, China’s LED has a lack of core technologies and overall excess capacity. Most of the major equipment and instruments in China's LED industry chain currently rely on imports.

Key raw materials, accessories, such as phosphors, sapphire, organic sources, arsine, phosphine, etc., rely on imports, MOCVD epitaxial equipment and some fully automated chip and packaging equipment also rely on imports, and the high price. The high-performance silicones and epoxy materials used in packaging also rely on imports. In the long run, the product cost is too high and it is not competitive, which will restrict the whole process of LED industry development. Therefore, the realization of self-sufficiency of key raw materials and equipment as soon as possible is the core of future development.