High-power LEDs to Push for LED Driver Development in 2008 - Electronic Component & Product Information | ECNAsiamag.com

High-power LEDs to Push for LED Driver Development in 2008 - Electronic Component & Product Information ECNAsiamag.comMason Chan, Technical Marketing Director, Zetex Semiconductors, gives his insight as to what to expect in the LED industry in 2008. Excerpts:What are the major trends, opportunities and challenges you see from your specific sector in 2007?LED lighting was an exciting area in 2007. The efficacy or the lighting efficiency of LED reached a level which was comparable to the widely used fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). In the past, the efficacy of LED's could be as high as fluorescent counterparts but only in the laboratory or only available at low light output levels. Starting in the second half of 2007, commercially available LED's reached an efficacy level of 70 lumens per watt or even higher. 100 lumens per watt products are expected to be available by end of 2007 or early 2008. This speeds up the adoption of LEDs as an emerging light source, especially in the general lighting sector.There are two principal reasons to use LED technology—life expectancy and potential for energy reduction. Since LED's needs special electronic controls to make them efficient and stable, LED lighting design engineers start to look seriously for good driver ICs. These engineers demand highly integrated, easy to use solutions to keep the circuit size small and efficiency high. The driver also plays an important role to prolong the lighting fixture life. The expected life-time of an LED exceeds 50 thousand hours. This poses challenges to Zetex to provide such highly efficient, compact and lasting solutions. Fortunately we anticipated the customers' requirements and have developed solutions to meet the need now. For example, Zetex has a solution using ZXLD1350 which is small enough to fit into the base housing of a ‘MR16’ LED lamp. A new kit set will be launched soon which further simplifies the solution in a 2-chip kit.