With the continual low price trend of in the LED market, manufacturers are beginning to consider options for lowering productions costs. LED package free products have become the focal point of the industry in 2013 with many manufacturers actively breaking into R&D and production including Taiwanese chip manufacturers Epistar and Forepi, large manufacturers TSMC Solid State Lighting and Lextar, and even large international manufacturers Toshiba, CREE, and Philips Lumileds. However, the products are mainly still in R&D and have yet to begin production, though package free product yield rates is driving mass production speed.
TSMC Package-free LED unit with PoD technology (photo courtesy: TSMC) Philips Lumileds latest compact Luxeon CoB product line. (photo courtesy: Philips Lumileds) Cree’s XQ-E LED series with CSP technology (photo courtesy: CREE)
In regards to package free products launched by various LED chip and top tier manufacturers, new ELC (Embedded LED Chip) products by Epistar during the manufacturing process after production have eliminated lead frames and bonding wire. Only phosphor and packaging resin for chips are required for direct SMT applications. By omitting the use of bonding wire, the luminosity of ELC products has increased. The product in the future has the opportunity to also omit the use of secondary optical lens.
TSMC’s package free product PoD (Phosphor on Die) directly places flip chips onto heat dissipation substrate. Similarly to ELC, the elimination of lead frames and bonding wire increases luminosity. It also broadens beam angle and ability to blend colors and adjust color temperature making it suitable for use in non-directional lighting.
Forepi has also been actively promoting package free products in 2013, and is also similarly using flip chips as a foundation in eliminating lead frames and bonding wire during manufacture. Lextar has introduced its package free CSP (Chip Scale Package) into lighting applications, with upstream crystalline also using flip chip technology to eliminate the use of bonding wire thus simplifying the packaging process.
Cree and Philips Lumileds have been announced their CSP product R&D results. The newly launched LUXEON Q by Philips Lumileds uses CSP and flip chip technology and does not require sapphire substrate to be removed during the final stage of production as before. The product directly replaces 3535 series package products on the market.
Cree’s XQ-E LED series also use CSP technology, which reduces the size of the chip. The XP-E2 product has a similar lighting performance but is 78 percent smaller to 1.6mm*1.6mm. The small design can increase color adjustment and optical control can expand lighting application fields.
