From infrared remote control to mobile phone display, from traffic lights to home appliances displays, LEDs, the new generation of lighting sources in this century, have increasingly penetrated into people's lives.

LED industry will enter the golden age

"In the next 3-5 years, the LED industry will enter the golden age. The competition of related industries at home and abroad will also be more intense. If LED companies do not attach importance to strengthening independent innovation in the core technology field, they will inevitably be eliminated in this competition." At the 2010 Academic Annual Meeting of the Jiangsu Institute of Electronics Society held recently, a speech by Zheng Youzhen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor of physics at Nanjing University, resonated with many participants.

More and more common household appliances use LED technology

LED is semiconductor lighting, an emerging lighting technology that uses chips to control lighting, and is one of the emerging industries in the province. Compared with traditional lamps, LEDs can save more than 90% of electricity, and the lifespan is 10 times that of fluorescent lamps and 100 times that of incandescent lamps.

"At present, LED as the backlight of the liquid crystal display has become the mainstream of the market." Zheng Youzhen said that LED backlights have obvious advantages in terms of sharpness, color reproduction and contrast, except for LCD TVs. LED technology computers, projectors, etc., will soon enter the homes of ordinary people.

China's LED street lamp occupancy rate is less than 0.5%

So far, LED has not been used in traditional lighting. "The reason is that its luminous efficiency can't keep up with incandescent and fluorescent lamps, but in street lighting and automotive lighting, LED technology has great advantages." Zheng Youzhen said.

The brightness of LED street lights will be 30%-50% higher than traditional street lights, and the energy consumption is only 50%. Taking 98W LED street light as an example, the lighting effect is equivalent to 250W high-pressure sodium lamp, and the service life will reach 50,000 hours, which is more than 10 times that of high-pressure mercury lamp. Zheng Youzhen said, "A medium-sized city with 300,000 street lamps can save 300 million kWh a year if they are all replaced with LED street lights." According to reports, at present, there are 28 million street lamps in China, and the annual increase and replacement of street lamps. It has reached 3 million to 4 million baht, and the occupancy rate of LED street lamps is less than 0.5%. There is huge room for future development.

In addition, in the field of automotive lighting, LED technology is also promising. Zheng Youzhen said that an LED bulb has a life span of 50,000 to 100,000 hours, and it can work for 12 to 23 years with 12 hours of work per day. “This means that the car can be replaced with LED lights for life.”

Technology and cost bottlenecks need to be broken

Although the LED industry has huge room for development, in addition to the technical bottleneck, the high cost is currently the biggest problem. A traditional street lamp costs up to 2,000 yuan, while a LED street light is as high as 4,000-8,000 yuan.

Behind the high price of LED products is the lack of core technology. The reporter learned that at present, Japan, the United States and Germany have tens of thousands of patents in the field of LED technology, far ahead of other countries. There are hundreds of LED companies in Jiangsu, but most of them are concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain such as packaging and application. The upstream core technology is very lacking. The LED chips are basically imported from the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea and other places. "Jiangsu enterprises must step up the research and development of core technologies with independent intellectual property rights, reduce costs, optimize the technology chain, create brands and grab the market, in order to win in the competition, and drive the development of China's LED industry." Zheng Youzhen appealed.