Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for June 2, 2021. We have had our June issue deploy since our previous newsletter. Subscribers can read it cover to cover in our digital magazine platform. And it looks great on mobile platforms thanks to our switch to a progressive platform a few months back.
The one article from the issue that I had foreshadowed in an earlier newsletter is an interview with Lumileds CEO Matt Roney. Matt has a history of leading companies in the midst of a technology sector transformation and his insights into solid-state lighting (SSL) were very instructive. Moreover, he revealed things about Lumileds’ R&D efforts that provide some forward-looking guidance on the company’s direction.
As for news, I wrote yesterday about new US Department of Energy (DOE) research about the LED and SSL sectors supply chains. And frankly the report looks fairly bleak if you are concerned about the flow of goods into and money out of the US, and much of Europe as well. The aforementioned Lumileds is probably the only source of LEDs being shipped from the US. China completely dominates the lamps market and to a lesser degree the luminaires market.
The LED die and packaged LED data was not surprising, especially in light of how the entire semiconductor industry operates. And it’s really not labor costs that draw fab facilities to foreign shores, but the cost to build and operate the fabs. We are seeing some of the major digital semiconductor players building new fabs in the US. We will see how that works out. These facilities will be fully automated.
The DOE report did project some opportunities for US luminaire manufacturers, and I would say European nations could share the same slice of manufacturing success. High-end, and high-priced, luminaires might be more easily manufactured locally. The fast-turn market needs some local manufacturing capabilities. And specialty applications such as lighting for health and wellbeing are a significant opportunity for US manufacturing, according to the report.
We had some packaged LED product news break since our last newsletter. Here we will again mention Lumileds. The company continues to push performance in the Luxeon 5050 LED family that is marketed as a high-power LED but that utilizes traditional mid-power packaging technology. Lumileds targets the devices at high-output applications such as street lights. And now the company is also characterizing the performance of the LEDs using horticultural lighting metrics as that sector finds the LED a good fit in such luminaires.
In the same article, we covered a new 3030 LED from Samsung that delivers improved light quality while also increasing efficacy relative to prior components in the same family. The LM301B EVO uses improved reflective packaging technology, better phosphor-conversion efficiency, and a phosphor formulation that delivers enhanced red energy to serve in demanding general illumination applications and meet the requirements of DLC V5.1 Premium and the European ErP Directive Grade A certification.
You will find many more stories of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. And always feel free to contact me to discuss content we post or to pitch a contributed article.
- Maury Wright, (858) 208-9442, [email protected]