High reliability white chip offers a long operational life

In recent years, the need to improve both design quality and visibility of industrial equipment has increased the use of compact white LEDs for numerical displays and visual indicators in these applications.

High reliability LEDs are required to guarantee no degradation in luminosity even with continuous operation for over ten years. However, achieving this has not been possible until now due to the use of epoxy or silicone resins for molding of typical White chip LEDs. These types of material could not provide enough reliability to prevent degradation in luminosity or provide enough package strength to facilitate mounting on circuit boards.

ROHM has been providing 1608-size chip LEDs in colours ranging from red to green, and now it is adding white to this product range to meet market demand. The adoption of a new material that combines the benefits of epoxy and silicone resins made it possible to achieve reliability of white chip LED in such a small package.

ROHM’s tests have demonstrated that the SMLD12WBN1W maintained 100% of its luminosity after operating for 1,000 hours (@25°C, IF=20mA). This represents an improvement of 20x in operational life when compared to other similar products available in the market.

Additional tests showed that the package strength was improved 25 times with the new material when compared to products using silicone resin. This will contribute to significantly reducing the occurrence of failures during fabrication when mounting on circuit boards.

ROHM is committed to continue developing highly reliable LEDs and to strengthen its product lineup while focusing on increasing usability.