Interpretation: How does LED driver chip 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 has penetrated from outdoor to indoor lighting application markets. China has also seen the emergence of tens of thousands of LED lighting companies of all sizes. The main reason for the success of LED lighting is that it is claimed to have the characteristics of energy saving, environmental protection, long life, easy control, and maintenance-free.

Ironically, we often hear that the LED lighting fixtures are not long-lived due to the life of the LED driver itself, which greatly increases the maintenance/use cost; or the low efficiency of the driver leads to the energy efficiency conversion ratio of the LED lighting fixtures not being as high as expected, or the output current ripple is not well controlled, which affects the light quality, making the green energy-saving advantages of LED lighting greatly discounted, and even affecting the market popularity. Therefore, the improvement and maturity of the LED industry chain, the driver is also an important part of it. According to a research report by IMSResearch, the LED driver chip market grew by 26% in 2010, reaching US$1 billion.

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

PowerIntegration (PI) has launched a very comprehensive design support software PIExpert, which can help designers quickly and accurately develop high-quality power supply solutions. In addition, we have also launched a large number of reference designs for cost-effective LED lighting solutions, many of which have an efficiency of more than 90% and a very long service life (up to 50,000 hours).

At present, cost is also an important issue facing the development of LEDs, so it is necessary to provide high-quality, low-cost power drivers. Roger Smullen, strategic marketing director of Analogic Tech, said: "Manufacturing cost-effective products requires consideration of several key factors: customer feedback, understanding of the market and system, efficient design methods, excellent manufacturing, and many other factors.

AnalogicTech is uniquely capable in all of these areas. "For example, the company has delivered several generations of solutions to world-class consumer product suppliers and has listened to feedback to eliminate their "pain points." Its modular design approach enables the reuse of tested and silicon-proven "cells": chip design elements across multiple similar integrated circuits, reducing costs and providing a range of solutions to system designers. Even their chips are manufactured on refurbished, lower-cost production lines to provide cost-effective solutions. In addition, AnalogicTech uses other proprietary processes and methods to reduce costs in price-sensitive consumer markets.

Heather Savage, senior marketing communications manager at PI, said: "The first step in designing the most cost-effective LED driver should be to choose the topology that best suits the application." PI uses a single-stage integrated PFC and CC circuit to provide power to the LED chip, which can save a switch conversion and input large-capacity capacitors. At the same time, the switch MOSFET, driver and control circuit are integrated into a single package, which can greatly reduce the number of peripheral components and provide more protection functions (such as overcurrent protection and accurate overheating protection). This not only ensures that challenging cost targets are met, but also greatly extends the product life. Many solutions today use the traditional two-stage approach - using boost PFC plus CC buck conversion to drive LEDs. These designs work satisfactorily at an ambient temperature of 50°C, but they face significant pressure when the temperature inside the lamp rises. Simply improving the quality of large-capacity electrolytic capacitors (which will increase costs) cannot effectively solve the problem.