Every night, the two bridges of Shanghai Nanpu and Lupu shine brightly, and the double rainbow runs through the day. The Shanghai World Expo Park between Pudong and Pudong between the two bridges is full of brilliance, attracting countless tourists to linger.

It is the LED that will lead the future low-carbon, high-tech lighting to create this gorgeous light and shadow Expo. According to estimates, China's LED output value will exceed 150 billion yuan this year, and the World Expo as the world's largest LED demonstration zone, can help China seize the high end of this global super industry?

Expo boost LED leads the global lighting industry revolution

In 2008, LED lighting technology LED was successfully applied to the landscape lighting of “Bird's Nest” and “Water Cube”, which launched the era of LED lighting in China. The Shanghai World Expo Park has become the world's largest LED demonstration zone, using at least 1.03 billion LED chips. The “One Axis and Four Pavilions” and even the beautiful and varied night lights of the entire park depend on this new technology to create a brighter future for LED lighting.

More than 80% of the nightscape lighting sources in the Shanghai World Expo Park use LED technology, and the “One Axis and Four Pavilions” have become a concentrated showcase for LED technology. At the opening ceremony, the world's largest outdoor LED display with a length of 300 meters and a height of 30 meters also brought a shocking visual feast to the global audience.

LED is semiconductor lighting, LED development is another revolution in the history of incandescent, fluorescent, and energy-saving lamps. LED can directly convert electricity into light, which is an ideal light source to replace traditional lighting, and will completely change the future global lighting industry.

The LED green light source is widely used in the indoor lighting source of the Expo venue. Compared with the ordinary incandescent lamp, the power saving can reach about 90%, while the general LED life can reach 60,000 to 100,000 hours, which is several times to several tens of times for the ordinary light source. And no heat, no radiation, recyclable, no pollution.

The Expo has always been the stage for the revolutionary technological achievements that have changed the way of human life, from telephone to electric lights. At the Paris World Expo in Paris in 1889, Edison invented the incandescent lamp to decorate the Eiffel Tower, prompting the rapid spread of incandescent lamps; in 1939 at the World Expo in New York and Los Angeles, the first practical fluorescent lamp was displayed, opening the era of global fluorescent lamps; The Shanghai World Expo will also herald the advent of the LED lighting era.

Zhou Minhao, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of Economics and Information Technology, said that through the exhibition of the World Expo, the huge industry of LED lighting will rapidly increase in China. “Because of its long working life, low power consumption, fast response time, small size, controllable, green and environmental protection, LED has become the focus of global attention. For China, it is also a strategic industrial opportunity.”

Not only the LED lighting industry itself has great potential, but also the huge power consumption savings brought by its energy-saving features is a difficult estimate.

Domestic LED industry accelerates layout

China has included semiconductor LED lighting in the medium and long-term science and technology development plan. At present, there are seven national semiconductor lighting industrialization bases in the country, and Shanghai is one of them. National Semiconductor Lighting Engineering was officially launched in June 2006. The industrial chain of epitaxial wafer production, chip fabrication, package integration, and LED applications has been formed.

The reporter learned that Shanghai will use the opportunity of the Expo to vigorously promote the LED industry. Zhou Minhao believes that the Expo is a concentrated manifestation of large-scale demonstration of LED technology. With the continuous development of LED technology, LED application products are also mature, LED applications have expanded from indicator lights, signal lights, display screens, landscape lighting, to white light. illumination. At present, LED is relatively mature in the display field, and its application in the field of special lighting is constantly developing. It has just started in the field of general lighting and has a huge development space.

Moreover, as early as the preparations for the World Expo, Shanghai has begun to study the LED-related enterprises to participate in the construction of the World Expo, and encourage local enterprises to actively participate in the Expo LED application demonstration. The landscape lighting of the “One Axis and Four Pavilions” is mainly designed by local enterprises. Manufacturing and installation.

At present, there are 424 related units engaged in the LED industry in Shanghai, including 19 research institutes. In 2009, the output value of Shanghai LED reached 10 billion yuan, and the Shanghai Semiconductor Lighting Patent Alliance was established. A new industrial cluster is expected to rise.

From a national perspective, the World Expo will also greatly promote the "outbreak" of the LED industry. According to Zhang Xiaofei, a doctor of the High-tech LED Industry Research Institute, since the middle of last year, the LED industry has begun to develop rapidly from upstream to downstream, and reached the blowout state in the first half of this year. At present, LED enterprises in China are mainly concentrated in the downstream packaging and application fields, and there are about 15 companies engaged in chip production. At present, the output value of the domestic LED industry has increased by 40% compared with the same period of last year, and the output value of professional lighting has more than doubled. The research report of the institute predicts that 4 billion yuan of private capital will enter the LED industry this year. By 2015, LED penetration in the domestic lighting market will reach a quarter.

No need to break the development bottleneck

"2000 was the first wave of LED industry development, but at that time the technology was not mature, so it did not develop. The development of the LED industry can now be said to have entered the second round of enthusiasm. Now in the domestic market, backlights, street lights, The display screen and other fields are in full swing. TV and laptop display screens have begun to enter the medium and large size. Landscape lighting and advertising have also developed. The LED industry has already reached a considerable scale. There are many companies with tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of profits. It can be said that the return has been seen. We expect LED to enter the family in the next three to five years, when the return rate will be more impressive." Ding Baoyu, an industry insider.

Although the cake is large, the development of China's LED industry is also facing huge global competition. The world's advanced countries have already begun to deploy this super industry. For example, in 1999, Japan began to implement the "Lighting in the 21st Century" program with a budget of 6 billion yen. In 2000, the United States began to launch the "National Semiconductor Lighting Research Program", which cost 10 years. The US dollar, South Korea, and the United Kingdom have all started semiconductor lighting projects, and the targets are directed at the LED industry.

According to statistics, in terms of output value, the penetration rate of LED in the domestic lighting industry is only 5% at present, mainly because the price is too high. The core technology relies on imports and the overall cost has become a stumbling block to the further development of the LED industry. Some insiders believe that the current commercial application of LED is not mature.

"Our upstream chip production lacks patented technology, the main technology is in the hands of foreign companies, the technology localization process is slow, affecting the development of the industry. MOCVD epitaxial furnace and its related supporting technology is the highest end of the LED industry chain, and the most Importantly, China’s technology in this area is still not good, mainly relying on imports. It is not only necessary to place orders at least six months in advance, but at least five sets must be set at a time, and the cost of each unit should add up to three or four million yuan. The cost is too high. Even so, it is possible to buy it. Even if it arrives, it can't be produced immediately. It will take 8 months to debug the work at the earliest, which greatly restricts the cost control of the upstream LED industry." Zhang Xiaofei said.

At the same time, it should also be noted that in the early stage of some emerging industries, it is prone to overheated investment, and later evolved into a price war, causing great losses to investors. In this regard, Ding Baoyu suggested that the state should standardize the LED industry as soon as possible, strengthen the guidance of investment funds in the short term, and prevent vicious competition. In the medium and long term, we should increase research and development efforts to solve the patent problems of core technologies in order to enter the world market.

"The country should have a master plan in promoting technological innovation. Now the industrial parks that study LED technology are blooming everywhere, too scattered, and the research results are not satisfactory. If the research and development of lighting technology can be upgraded to a strategic height, the market-oriented competition mechanism will be introduced. The road to specialization will surely succeed." Zhang Xiaofei said.