LED (Light Emitting Diode) is an energy-saving, environmentally friendly, long-lasting, and versatile light source. Professional consulting firms predict that the global high brightness LED market will reach $9 billion by 2011, with an average annual compound growth rate of 16.7%. With the rapid improvement of LED luminous efficiency, the LED application market has moved towards ordinary lighting. However, LED also faces development bottlenecks such as high cost and uncertain performance. In the current global lighting business opportunity worth billions of dollars, the limitation of high LED prices remains the primary factor restricting its development.

High cost and inability to fully commercialize

Since the first commercial LED was launched in the 1960s, LED has been applied in the lighting industry for more than 40 years. A relatively complete industrial chain has been formed in the upstream, midstream, and downstream of the industry. LED is being applied in more and more industries, especially in the field of indoor lighting, which is widely recognized as an important development aspect of LED in the future.

In the field of indoor lighting, traditional light sources are still mainly used, generally including incandescent lamps, halogen lamps, fluorescent lamps, metal halide lamps, etc. This type of light source consumes a large amount of power, has a single color and control method, and has high thermal radiation, which limits its application in certain special places. LED light sources have the advantages of full-color control, energy saving and environmental protection, which can create high-quality light environments that cannot be replaced by other traditional light sources. They can fully meet the market demand for high-end indoor decorative atmosphere lighting and provide new ideas for indoor space lighting design. Especially with the emergence of high-power LEDs, a breakthrough has been found in the application of LED lighting in the field of indoor lighting, accelerating the application of LED in the field of indoor lighting.

It is reported that currently, the application of LED in indoor lighting engineering is mainly concentrated in the field of commercial lighting, with decorative lighting as the main focus. At present, LED can replace traditional light sources in many places, especially with the emergence of high-power LED, which accelerates the speed of LED replacing traditional lighting sources and makes the large-scale application of LED in indoor lighting more realistic. With the continuous maturity of the entire industry and the vertical deepening of LED product development, there will be significant changes in the price and luminous efficiency of high-power LEDs. In addition, with the strong guidance of national policies and the active promotion of social public opinion, we have reason to believe that in the next decade, LEDs will definitely fly into ordinary people's homes like fluorescent lamps do now. However, currently white LED indoor lighting cannot be fully commercialized in the global market due to high production costs.

Tang Guoqing, Secretary General of the Shanghai Optoelectronics Industry Association and Director of the Semiconductor Lighting Professional Committee of the China Lighting and Electrical Appliances Industry Association, emphasized in an interview with reporters that the entry of LED into indoor general lighting is a major trend in development. However, due to its high cost, it still takes time to upgrade and replace incandescent and fluorescent light sources on a large scale. However, it has gradually been promoted in areas such as mood lighting (indoor museums, music halls, high-end hotels, residential buildings, etc.), office or reception lighting, and indoor public places (such as indoor parking lots, commercial areas, etc.). The ultimate realization of semiconductor lighting requires the widespread application of indoor lighting, which is the development tone, "said Tang Guoqing.

Peng Wanhua, secretary-general of Optoelectronic Devices Branch of China Optical and Optoelectronic Industry Association, said that the cost of LED lighting products is too high, which is several times as high as that of ordinary lighting, and some are more than ten times as high. The application field of LED products is currently in the development and expansion stage, and has not yet formed a large-scale market, which needs further development and expansion.

The issues of light efficiency and heat dissipation still need to be resolved

In recent years, with the rapid development of white LED technology, people have begun to seriously consider whether LED has entered the field of indoor white lighting on a large scale. Liang Bingwen, the general manager of Shanghai Lanbao Optoelectronic Materials Company, introduced that many practical and impractical solutions have been proposed, and the application of LED in indoor lighting is still in the exploratory stage. Indoor lighting is a very huge market, and its development prospects are beyond doubt. However, indoor lighting requires high quality of light, and LED still has many areas that need improvement. In the field of indoor lighting, it will not pose a threat to traditional light sources including incandescent lamps, halogen lamps, fluorescent lamps, energy-saving lamps, metal halide lamps, etc. in the short term Liang Bingwen emphasized.

Cheng Deshi from Shanghai Sansi Technology Development Co., Ltd. believes that the most basic threshold for the application of LED in indoor lighting is that the luminous efficiency must reach the level of fluorescent energy-saving lamps. If we consider the price factor again, the luminous efficiency of LED should be at least 1.5 times that of fluorescent energy-saving lamps. At present, LED is far from reaching this level. The simplest way to judge is to touch the heat sink of an LED lamp with your hand. When the temperature of the heat sink is lower than the temperature of the fluorescent lamp casing, the era of LED indoor lighting can truly come Cheng Deshi expressed.

Fudan University professor Fang Zhilie believes that indoor lighting is undoubtedly the largest market. Considering that the luminous efficiency has not yet exceeded much compared to energy-saving lamps and fluorescent lamps (laboratory records have already doubled, but product efficiency is still similar), coupled with much higher costs, the market launch still needs time, "Fang Zhilie believes.

Peng Wanhua said that the LED industry is still very small at present, with a market of only tens of billions of yuan. There is still room for breakthrough in LED technology, especially in terms of luminous efficiency. Currently, the industrialization level is generally between 60lm/W and 80lm/W, which has no advantage compared to energy-saving lamps. This indicator should be raised to 150lm/W to 200lm/W. In addition, the requirements for the main parameters of LEDs used in ordinary lighting, such as color temperature, color rendering, safety, etc., are not yet clear, "said Peng Wanhua.

Improve the construction of technology transformation platform

The potential market for LED products is very large. Peng Wanhua believes that in order to develop the LED industry, innovation and breakthrough points must be sought in LED technology. "The LED industry can be made bigger and stronger by adopting new technologies and processes for mass production, reducing LED costs, accelerating the development of LED product application fields and expanding the market scale." Peng Wanhua said.

From the current technological development both domestically and internationally, the entry of LED into indoor lighting for thousands of households is an inevitable process. Li Jinmin, director of Institute of Semiconductor, Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that if LED tube lighting tools are widely used in household lighting, the market will be very huge. The next three to five years will be an important period of development, and semiconductor lighting will emerge like mushrooms in the field of general lighting. With the maturity of new technologies in upstream chip development and the supplier's MOCVD epitaxy