HB LED and LED packaging 2009 report -- One law for LED packaging industry

LYON, FRANCE: Yole Développement has released its new markets and technological study dedicated to HB LED and LED packaging industry: HB LED & LED Packaging 2009.

Yole’s report highlights the main technical challenges, current solutions and future trends dedicated to the LED devices. The analysis includes different packaging aspects: equipment, materials and services. In this report, Yole identified HB LED & LED packaging companies, collected their expertise and analyzed it.

HB LED & LED Packaging 2009 answers to the following questions: What are the technological challenges? How is organized the industrial chain? What are the emerging processes?

HB LED &LED devices market represents today about $ 5.56 billion, according to Yole Développement. In this context, many companies are thinking about the way to improve the devices with new properties, low costs, etc. Packaging is one way to think. Yole Développement analyses the main trends and segments the HB LED & LED packaging industry: in 2009, the material & equipment market should reach $ 1.2 billion (this figure does not include optics, leadframe, etc.).

HB LED & LED Packaging 2009 ReportSource: Yole Développement.

LED devices’ market, a large sector in semiconductor industry
The market is a high‐growth field in the semiconductor industry. The supply chain is filled with various players from LED die manufacturers (Epistar, Forepi, etc.), to LED assembly suppliers (Harvatek, Citizen, Liteon, Samsung, etc.), to fully integrated players (Lumileds, Osram, Toyoda Gosei).

In the wide range of LED packaging solutions, Yole Développement presents the existing packaging process flow, materials and equipment and the main evolution in the coming years.

For example, LED devices have been split in two categories:
• Regular LEDs or LED lamps: these devices are low‐end products.
• Added value LEDs: it means high brightness and ultra high brightness LEDs.

The main processes dedicated to the LEDs manufacturing are presented for both categories:
• Dicing
• Die bonding
• Electrical interconnect
• Thermal management
• Encapsulation

Main LED packaging challenges
“For the regular and added‐value LEDs, assembly approach is not the same”, explained Cyrille Chemama, Market Analyst at Yole Développement. The company has working with key players to identify and segment this industry. “Thanks to these different contacts, two main technological processes have been clearly identified”, said Cyrille Chemama:

• A standard process for low cost LEDs (LED lamps):
Regular LED packaging process flow is based on standard IC process and almost the same standard material. The main reason is cost because regular LEDs are low cost products: such devices cost less than $0.10.

• A specific process for LEDs with high technological added‐value:
As a future lighting source, HB/UHB LED packaging should have good optical properties, high thermal dissipation and high reliability. Finally, the better product is a right combination between optical, thermal and reliability.

“It is clearly sure that now we are able to make the perfect product, says Cyrille Chemama. But the cost would be so high that it will not be successful”. A choice has to be made for each application: for example, optical efficiency for LCD backlighting and thermal management for automotive lighting.

One product, one process
Unlike regular LEDs, no standards currently exist for packaging of HB‐LED. Each LED vendor has their own proprietary design for most aspects of the assembly process flow. Cost is the primary driver for this market: cheaper solutions with the best optical or thermal properties are under investigation. Main goals are the reduction of the number parts, use of less expensive materials.

A major issue today is 2 or 3 inches wafers. Indeed, if LEDs manufacturing process is made on 2 or 3 inches wafers; it creates handling issues on equipment. In this context, according to Yole Développement, the move to 4 then 6 or 8 inch wafers will allow more standardized solutions using regular processes and equipment.

In particular, there is a big trend for Wafer Level Packaging of silicon LED modules which aims at pushing LED to the general lighting market.