Thermal challenges in the future generation solid state lighting applications: light emitting diodes

Light emitting diodes, LEDs, historically have been used for indicators and produced low amounts of heat. The introduction of high brightness LEDs with white light and monochromatic colors have led to a movement towards specialty and general illumination applications. The increased electrical currents used to drive the LEDs have focused more attention on the thermal paths in the level-1 packages and developments in LED power packaging. The luminous efficiency of LEDs is expected to reach over 80 lumens/watt, that is approximately 6 times more than one tungsten bulb. The thermal challenges of these products in many applications will open new research areas for engineers from chip level to system level thermal management.