New Osram LEDs Provide More Consistent Brightness And Greater Efficiency For Backlighting Portable Device Displays

The MicroSideled 3806 ensures stable light levels on the display. The brightness of this light emitting diode, which is available in white and blue, remains consistent throughout its lifetime, and the color rendering is excellent. It also offers impressive battery-saving efficiency, making these semiconductor light sources ideal for portable devices such as tablets and smartphones.

Impressive luminous efficacy and external quantum efficiency
The white version is a standard LED with chip and converter, achieving a high efficiency of 150 lumens/watt (lm/W). “For white, in particular, we offer very fine binning so there is always uniform color over the entire backlit surface,” according to MW Lui, Product Marketing Manager at Osram Opto Semiconductors.

The blue MicroSideled offers an impressive efficiency of 55 percent, measured as the external quantum efficiency (EQE), i.e., the ratio of the electrical power used to the emitted optical power. This LED is designed for special display technology that uses quantum dots (special nano particles) as conversion material. This conversion technology features a thin sheet with quantum dots in the backlight, which is illuminated by the blue LEDs. This, in turn, leads to an extremely narrow-band emission spectrum that accurately matches the color filters of the backlighting unit. Light losses are, therefore, kept to a minimum and the colors are more vibrant. System efficiency with this conversion technology is 10 to 15 percent greater than with mainstream white LED solutions. Coverage of the color space is also 33 percent better.

Both versions are extremely compact, measuring only 3.8 x 1.0 x 0.6 mm (0.15 x 0.03 x 0.2 inches) in length, width, and height, and have good thermal conductivity with a thermal resistance of 66 (K/W).

“The new MicroSideled offers extraordinarily high efficiency, constant brightness and brilliant color rendering, irrespective of which technology is used to create white light,” summarized Lui.

Technical data:

Dimensions Component size 3.8 mm x 1.0 mm 0.6 mm
Beam angle 120°
Lifetime Typically 15,000 hours (L70/ B50)
Color temperature 2700 K to 10,000 K
Efficiency 150 lm/W (white), 55% EQE (blue)
Operating current 20 mA
Forward voltage < 3.0 V

Tablets, ultrabooks and smartphones benefit from these highly efficient, compact and robust LEDs because they offer consistent brightness throughout their lifetimes while extending battery life thanks to their high efficiency.