Interpretation: How LED Driver Chips Affect the Life of LED Lamps

In recent years, LED as a new energy-saving light source has won high investment enthusiasm and great attention in the world and China, and penetrated from the outdoor to the indoor lighting application market. China has also emerged tens of thousands of LED lighting companies. The main reason for letting LED lighting shine is its energy-saving, environmentally friendly, long-life, easy-to-control, maintenance-free features.

However, it is ironic that we often hear that the LED lighting power supply itself directly drags down the LED lighting fixtures to become "longevity", which greatly increases the maintenance/use cost; or the efficiency of the driving power supply is not high, leading to LED lighting fixtures. The energy efficiency conversion ratio is not as high as imagined, or the output current ripple is not well controlled, which affects the illumination quality, which makes the green energy-saving advantages of LED illumination greatly reduced, and even affects the market. Therefore, the improvement and maturity of the LED industry chain, driving power is also an important part of it. According to IMSResearch's research report, the LED driver chip market grew by 26% in 2010 to reach $1 billion.

AnalogicTech's LED drivers bring end-user benefits in terms of battery life, security, design simplicity, board space and functionality. Their drive products use proprietary ModularBCD process technology to reduce the cost of DRAM production lines in partner factories and address the price demands of the consumer market. By implementing multiple voltage levels required for LED driving without the overhead of management and integrating lateral TrenchDMOS transistors with high current sink performance on a single chip, cutting-edge integrated circuits are provided for LED driver applications. With a breakdown voltage of up to 150V, TrenchDMOS transistors are ideal for controlling very long strings of LEDs. Their LED driver family includes the AAT2402, AAT2403, AAT2405, AAT1405/7/9/51 and AAT2439, which enable handheld and large to medium LED backlighting applications with up to 100mA drive capability.

PowerIntegration (PI) has introduced the full-featured design support software PIExpert to help designers quickly and accurately develop high-quality power solutions. In addition, we have introduced a number of reference designs for cost-effective LED lighting solutions, many of which are more than 90% efficient and have a very long life (up to 50,000 hours).

At present, cost is also an important issue for LED development, so it is necessary to provide high-quality low-cost power supply. Roger Smullen, director of strategic marketing at AnalogicTech, said: "There are several key factors to consider when manufacturing a cost-effective product: customer feedback, market and system understanding, efficient design methods, superior manufacturing, and many other factors.

AnalogicTech has unique capabilities in all of these areas. For example, the company has provided generations of solutions to world-class consumer goods suppliers and has listened to various feedbacks to eliminate its “pain points.” Its modular design approach enables it to be replicated across multiple similar integrated circuits. Use tested and silicon-proven "cells": chip design components to reduce costs and provide system designers with a range of solutions. Even their chips are manufactured on refurbished, lower cost production lines to provide A cost-effective solution. In addition, AnalogicTech leverages other proprietary processes and methods to reduce costs in a price-sensitive consumer market.

Heather Savage, senior market communications manager at PI, believes that "the first step in designing the most cost-effective LED driver should be to choose the topology that best fits the application." PI uses a single-stage integrated PFC and CC circuit to power the LED chips . Eliminates primary switching and input bulk capacitors, while integrating switching MOSFETs, drivers, and control circuitry into one package, greatly reducing the number of external components and providing additional protection features such as overcurrent protection and precise overheating protection). This not only ensures that challenging cost targets are met, but also significantly extends product life. Many of today's solutions use a traditional two-stage approach—using a boost PFC plus a CC buck converter to drive the LEDs. These designs perform satisfactorily at ambient temperatures of 50 ° C, but they are subject to significant stress as the temperature inside the luminaire rises. Simply improving the quality of large-capacity electrolytic capacitors (which increases costs) does not solve the problem effectively.