Government to increase investment in domestic LED chip LED industry began to meet domestic demand

Before 2002, almost all of China's LED chips have to rely on imports. And now, the domestic chip has been able to meet the needs of half of domestic production.

The Chinese government has decided to vigorously develop the domestic LED industry and provide services for all its lighting projects. At present, China's 10 - 12% of the energy consumption in the field of lighting, equivalent to an annual consumption of about 300 billion watt hours of electricity, so now the competent authorities want to use energy-saving LED lighting to gradually replace the traditional lighting equipment.

Figure 1: Water Cube

To promote the development of LED industry, China has increased investment in LED technology. In the five year plan from 2006 to 2010, the state invested $350 million ($51 million) in the LED industry by the Ministry of science and technology. Is this investment starting to work? This is obvious, according to director Wu Ling China national solid state lighting planning office said, LED sales increased six times in the past five years, the luminous efficiency of LED will soon reach 100 lm/W, this chip can provide a wide variety of applications.

Income from the domestic market, the domestic LED chip sales last year was 65 million yuan, which is significantly more than the 2003 yuan of 10 million. In 2008 LED application revenue (RMB450 billion), accounting for the largest part of the packaging and chip manufacturing, respectively, 18 billion 500 million yuan and RMB 1 billion 900 million yuan.

Wu explained that these revenues are jointly created by 3000 companies: of which the company belongs to the LED application side; the 1000 companies do LED packaging, including the production of LED chips have a total of 50 companies in the. Seven national LED Industrial Park located in Dalian, Shijiazhuang (Hebei), Yangzhou, Shanghai, Xiamen, Nanchang and Shenzhen, at the same time, Chairman Wu also said that in all other city industrial chain also has competitiveness.

Imported and domestic LED has been used in a wide variety of applications in 2008, LED according to different market application share are: 28%, building lighting and display symbols 27%, 7%, 22% mobile devices, lighting lights, automotive lighting and other 6% 2% 8%.

Figure 2: distribution of LED chip manufacturers in mainland China

China has made great progress in the fabrication of LED chips in the past few years. Experts said in 2002 must also be imported LED chips, but only in 2003 the domestic chip accounted for 5% of total demand, and with the time evolution of this proportion continues to increase to 2008 domestic chip has reached 49%. Currently GaN and AlGaInP based on the LED chip shipments have soared to 46 billion, as shown in table 1.

Although China's LED industry is getting stronger and stronger, the performance of its high brightness products still lags behind the world's leading level. Compared with overseas manufacturers, Chinese companies are small, there is a huge gap in product quality. Director Wu said. She also pointed out that most of the domestic LED chip applications in the low-end products, while 85% of the high-power chips have to rely on imports.

Nevertheless, the domestic high-power LED chip optical efficiency growing faster and faster. 2005, the use of imported chip packaging, China's best white LED 350 mA current light efficiency reached 30 - 35 lm/W, while the use of domestic chip packaging is only 20 - 25 lm/W. Now, the domestic LED chip package has reached a current of 350 mA light efficiency of 80 - 90 lm/W.

At present, China promote the five year plan has been designated by the cost will be 33% in the leading research and research in the future (the rest has been divided into 29% key application, LED 29% and the development of funds industry around the detection method and standard 9%). At the same time, the national solid state lighting project is also funded to support enterprises and research institutions to develop new technologies to improve the effectiveness of LED. "The goal is to develop 2010 to support the general lighting of the lm/W chip, and achieve a large-scale production of 100 lm/W chip. Director Wu said. Another goal is to promote technological innovation and the development of industrial parks.

When the domestic high-power LED can be put into practical applications, solid-state LED lighting applications have emerged around us. "There are some lighting project using LED lights, such as streets, underground parking lot, shopping malls, schools and subway system" Wu explained, "the development of energy saving and expand domestic demand, LED lighting is an important historical period of development into hitherto unknown. "

With the improvement of domestic LED performance, the threat of patent litigation with foreign LED manufacturers is also increasing. However, it seems that China's LED industry is actively solve the problem of patents and intellectual property rights. Domestic chip makers are applying for patents in China and the United States, some companies are trying to acquire foreign companies to obtain international patents. A number of universities in China are also conducting LED research, as well as the national solid state lighting program office is also trying to solve the problem of intellectual property rights LED chip manufacturers.

There is no doubt that China is speeding up the development of LED technology to catch up with the leading chip manufacturers, China is also the main force in the rapid development of the global LED industry. This is good news, as China's competition will help to reduce the price of LED, solid-state lighting can also be accepted, and help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world.