EngineeringEssentials

DON TUITE | ANALOG/POWER EDITOR

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LED Theory
Application
AND PRACTICE
Learn some basics about how LEDs work, how their manufacturers charac-
terize them, and how circuits that drive and/or control them are designed.

L
EDs are the most efficient way to turn ELECTROLUMINESCENCE
an electric current into illumination. When current is flowing forward through a semi-
When a current flows through a diode conductor junction diode, each time an electron and
in the forward direction, it consists of a hole recombine, energy is released as a photon. The
surplus electrons moving in one direc- color of the light (the energy of the photon) is deter-
tion in the lattice and “holes” (voids mined by the energy band gap of the semiconductor
in the lattice) moving in the other. Occasionally, material. Aluminum gallium arsenide (AlGaAs)
electrons can recombine with holes. When they do, yields red, indium gallium nitride (InGaN) yields
the process releases energy in the form of photons. green, and zinc selenide (ZnSe) yields blue.
This is true of all semiconductor junctions, but The light from red, green, and blue LED diodes
LEDs use materials that maximize the effect. The can be combined to produce white light, but with
color of the light emitted (corresponding to the ener- limited brightness. More commonly these days,
gy of the photon) is determined by the semiconduc- HB white diodes combine a blue InGaN diode with
tor materials that form the diode junction. a yellow phosphor, usually cerium-doped yttrium
The latest high-brightness (HB) white LEDs are aluminum garnet (Ce3+:YAG) on the inside of the
made possible by semiconductor materials that device package. Photons from the phosphor are per-
produce blue or ultraviolet photons. In addition to ceived along with photons from the diode junction.
the diode, an HB package contains “yellow” phos- Broadly speaking, the eye perceives the result as
phors on the inside of its lens. Some “blue” photons white. More narrowly, it’s a bit more complicated.
escape, but others excite the phosphors, which then There is a quantum effect called Stoke’s shift in
give off “yellow” photons. The result can be tuned in which a photon emitted by the phosphor has less
manufacturing to produce “white” light. energy than the photon it absorbed from the blue
Lots of engineering relates to controlling the qual- LED (Fig. 1). In an HB white LED, a fraction of
ity of this light, with several ways to interconnect the blue light is Stokes-shifted. LED makers take
multiple LEDs to increase and manage light output. advantage of this phenomenon by using multiple
The general approach is to drive series strings with a phosphor layers with different photon energies
constant current, but there are subtleties to interfac- to spread the emitted spectrum, which results in a
ing the drivers with ac supplies and control schemes. more natural lighting effect.

36
TANDING
LUMINOUS EFFICACY
LEDs for lighting are rated in terms of luminous efficacy: the
ratio of luminous flux to electrical input power. It is expressed
in lumens/watt. Lumens are defined in terms of the light from
the luminosity function, which standards bodies have agreed
represents the eye’s response to different wavelengths.
In other words, the lumen part is calibrated to what has been
decided is an average human’s visual system. For a rough
a source that emits a standardized level (one candela) of lumi- comparison, the sun has a luminous efficacy of 93, and an
nous intensity (which most people would call brightness) of ordinary tungsten light bulb has a luminous efficacy of 15. The
over a solid angle of one steradian. Those units account for the best HB LEDs today hit between 130 and 150, and the rate of
sensitivity of a human eye by accounting for something called improvement doesn’t seem to be flattening out. That doesn’t

Much of the challenge in creating dimmable drivers

for replacement bulbs is shrinking the circuitry that
fits into the screw-in base. Two of Marvell’s recent
designs address the challenge in a conventional base
(left) and a much smaller one (right).

ELECTRONIC DESIGN GO TO [Link] 37

EngineeringEssentials
Intensity

Stokes shift
with phosphors that emit photons for different colors that when
mixed add up to white light. According to Cree, most of the
recent advances in HB white LED manufacturing arise from the
Absorption Emission techniques used for depositing the phosphor so it will be struck
by the maximum number of primary photons and will, in turn,
radiate the maximum number of secondary photons in an opti-
mum pattern. In other words, just laying down a “glob” of phos-
phor on top of the diode junction isn’t a very good approach.
(An “optimum pattern” facilitates the use of lenses and reflec-
tors in shaping the light from all the LEDs in the fixture.)

LED PACKAGING AND PRICING

Wavelength Basic optical principles create a bit of difficulty in getting
photons out of the diode semiconductor material, which tend
to have high refractive indices. If a photon cannot cross the
1. High-brightness LED makers use the Stokes shift to spread the “yellow” interface between the semiconductor material and the air (or
portion of the device’s light that comes from phosphors that are excited vacuum) surrounding it, it’s reflected back into the mate-
by the blue light from the diode. The activated material emits photons rial and absorbed. If the semiconductor material were cubic in
at a different wavelength than the photons it absorbs. By using multiple shape, it would only emit light more or less perpendicular to
“yellow” phosphors, they achieve a higher CRI, at the cost of some lumi- one face or another of the cube. (Think back to Physics 102 and
nous efficacy. the part of the chapter on optics that dealt with “critical angle.”)
So, simply dicing a wafer of LEDs and treating them as if they
mean they’re brighter than the sun, though. They’re just more were just another semiconductor chip would be unsatisfactory.
efficient than the sun’s thermonuclear reaction at putting out If one weren’t dealing with epitaxial diode materials depos-
photons at the wavelengths we can see. In fact, they’re 10 times ited on a flat substrate, one might think of emulating a dia-
more efficient at it than old-fashioned light bulbs. mond cutter and faceting the material. But the more practical
approach is to pot the LED in a transparent plastic material
CRI & COLOR BINNING with a refractive index between the indices of the semi material
Using multiple “yellow” phosphors with a blue or ultraviolet and air while shaping the glob of plastic into something more
LED improves the color-rendering index
(CRI) of the device. CRI is a measure of 2. This basic LED edge-lighting driver can be powered by 5 to 48 V dc. It uses dc-dc boost to provide
how closely the colors of an object being voltage to a constant current driver and LED string. The design represents a constant current chopper
illuminated artificially resemble those driver that provides a dc current with 10% ripple to an LED string used to edge light an LCD.
colors when they are viewed under actu-
al sunlight. For the LED maker, a high VIN
DC-DC boost
CRI implies lower luminous efficacy
than single-color LEDs. But for natural- P
Section A +12 V
looking colors, good CRI is essential, so
it presents an engineering tradeoff with
luminous efficacy. LED

For individual white LEDs, “white-

Section B LED
ness” varies from unit to unit, so LED +12 V
Section C +12 V
makers sort and bin them to enable light-
+PW LED
ing designers to mix and match bins +
+12 V

to achieve the precise flavor of white LED

+
they want. This binning follows a model –
–
developed in the 1950s for then-new – LED
+
fluorescents. But month by month, the
bins are getting tighter, making it easier LED
to achieve a specified color with few-
er LEDs. That’s a good thing, because
+12 V Inductor
those steady improvements in luminous
+12 V
efficacy mean that it takes fewer and
–
fewer LEDs to achieve a specified inten-
sity of light output. + Sense
resistor
As mentioned, HB white LEDs work +Enable

by combining blue-emitting LED diodes +12 V

38 05.02.13 ELECTRONIC DESIGN

EngineeringEssentials

spherical, or hemispherical, that increases the critical angle at Driving LEDs in series introduces the question of what hap-
both interfaces. pens when a single LED fails as an open circuit. That can be
Logic devices have Moore’s law, which has little validation dealt with somewhat expensively by providing parallel Zener
except history. LEDs have Haitz’ law, named after Roland diodes or silicon-controlled rectifiers (SCRs) across each LED.
Haitz, which says that commercial LED maximum light output SCRs are the more attractive choice because they dissipate less
doubles approximately every 36 months. Haitz’ law leads to power if they have to conduct around the failed LED.
implications for designers of LED-based products: whatever In a design using multiple parallel strings, including a sepa-
the rated light output of the most expensive LED is today, it rate driver for each string is obviously more expensive than
will be available at baseline prices a year and a half from now. using fewer drivers (ideally one) with sufficient output capac-
Future products with the same light output will require fewer ity. Even though an approach using parallel strings also tends
and fewer LEDs. to even out the current-sharing problem, it is still necessary to
use a ballast resistor for each string to accommodate variations
DRIVING LEDS in forward voltage drop (Vf) across the diodes.
It seems as if driving LEDs ought to be simple. They’re To calculate a resistor value, assuming a ±10% variation in
diodes, they have a certain forward voltage drop, and their light forward voltage drop across the string and a need to match the
output depends on current, for which there is a do-not-exceed currents in each parallel string to within ±20%, start by assum-
value for any given diode. That seems like a manageable set of ing that for each string the sum of the LED forward drops,
parameters, doesn’t it? But then it starts getting complicated. plus the voltage across the ballast resistor, should equal 80%
As with conventional diodes, LED current varies exponentially of the nominal output voltage of the driver. From that, it’s pos-
with the voltage, i.e., a small change in voltage can cause a sible to calculate both the necessary ballast resistance and the
large change in current. That’s why, in most cases, LEDs are maximum current capacity of the driver. An easier alternative
driven with constant-current sources. is to buy the series/parallel string arrays matched and cross-
Few applications use only a single LED, though. Whether connected, as in Philips’ Luxeon Flood products.
it’s for a screen-backlighting array or for LEDs in a streetlight
or a replacement for an incandescent or fluorescent lamp, most DRIVING-CIRCUIT DESIGN EXAMPLE
designs need more than one LED. Therefore, one of the first To illustrate a common design approach in a backlight-
decisions a designer must make is whether to drive the LEDs ing application, consider this design from Endicott Research
in series, in parallel, or as a parallel array of strings. Generally, Group, where a constant current-chopper driver provides a dc
it isn’t a good idea to drive a number of single LEDs in paral- current with low ripple to an LED string used to edge-light a
lel because that can lead to non-uniform current sharing, even graphic display (Fig. 2).
when the LEDs are all rated for the same forward-voltage drop. The pass switching device (P at the top of the LED string) is
a P-channel FET that provides the current to the string and, in
3. The Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) two-wire standard has conjunction with the inductor, sense resistor, and boost volt-
all but totally replaced early dimmable control interfaces for tube lighting age, establishes the chopping current and frequency. The dc-dc
in office and industrial applications. This Marvell controller takes it a step boost stage is a closed-loop boost supply that provides suf-
further for smart buildings by including a ZigBee wireless interface. ficient voltage to drive current to the LED string with at least 2
V of headroom.
The part of the diagram designated Section A shows a com-
parator and associated resistors that form a positive hysteresis
circuit. It compares the voltage across the sense resistor to a
known reference. Section B shows another comparator and
associated resistors that buffer the Section A output to ensure
proper hysteresis and provide drive to the pass device. Section
C supplies LED on/off and dimming control. The +ENABLE
input turns the backlight on or off, and +PW pulse-width
modulates the chopper driver on and off for dimming.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS
When a general lighting system requires a lot of power, then
the first power-conversion stage, the ac-dc stage, gets interest-
ing. That’s because while it’s a long way from the LEDs, the
U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and the European Union
have made it clear that they want it to exhibit a very clean pow-
er factor, which is difficult because of that darned capacitance
on the output of the rectifier bridge.
This is approached in different ways. The EU’s IEC61000-
3-2 specifies acceptable levels for the first 32 harmonics of

40 05.02.13 ELECTRONIC DESIGN

EngineeringEssentials

the ac line frequency, while the DoE’s and reducing the number of external
Energy Star program (which is voluntary components so that unit cost is low and
but enforced by the buying power of the the entire circuit can fit into the base of
U.S. government) specifies a power fac- the replacement bulb, even if the base of
tor of at least 0.7. On top of that, real the bulb is much smaller than a conven-
customers for general lighting applica- tional bulb base (see the opening figure).
tions demand a minimum power factor All of this is only relevant if a cir-
of 0.9, so that’s what designers aim for. cuit designer works for a company that
That in turn requires a somewhat makes replacement bulbs. A newer chal-
sophisticated flyback topology for the lenge relates to LEDs that are used for
first stage, with operation in critical street lighting, parking garages, ware-
conduction mode. Subsequent stages houses, and general outdoor lighting.
of switching regulation, buck, boost, There, the dimming requires a different
or buck/boost support a final stage that approach, because it is being applied in
provides the drive to the string or paral- new construction or large retrofit jobs
lel strings of LEDs. This is generally a to external LED fixtures that have been
switcher also. driven by external ballast circuits.
Alternatively, it is possible to use Traditionally, an analog interface
linear regulators, which makes it less called 1-10V has been used. It uses a
expensive to achieve the required over- simple 0- to 10-V dc control level to set
all efficiency. The output stage, in that brightness. But in these applications and
case, could be designed to supply the in smart buildings, the Digital Address-
full voltage needed by the sum of the able Lighting Interface (DALI) is replac-
string’s forward voltage drops while dis- ing 1-10V. It is described in the fluores-
sipating less than a volt in its own pass cent lamp ballast standard IEC 60929
transistors. under Annex E. The ZVEI committee of
the German Central Association of the
BUILDINGS AND STREET LIGHTING Industry controls the standard for elec-
Some LED-replacement-bulb dim- tric and electronic Products within the
ming ICs are compatible with legacy Activity Group “DALI.”1
triac controls intended for incandes- Of course, a hard-wired DALI con-
cent bulbs. The fundamental challenge nection is only the beginning. LED light-
in that environment is to present a load ing in modern smart buildings is just as
that looks like the resistive impedance likely to be controlled by the ubiquitous
of a tungsten filament and to convert ZigBee interface (Fig. 3).
the triac’s time-chopped line-voltage ac
waveform, which is based on the posi- REFERENCE
tion of the dimmer’s control knob into a 1. For a detailed explanation of DALI, in
series of duty-cycle controlled, constant- English, go to [Link]
current dc pulses at a low voltage suit- manual_gb.pdf.
able for the screw-in LED replacement
bulb or fluorescent tube. A further chal-
lenge is to achieve a power factor close MORE FROM DON TUITE
to unity on the ac line. For more from Analog/Power
Generally, all this is accomplished Editor Don Tuite, check out
with a critical-conduction mode fly- his blog, Secondary Emissions, at
back ac-dc stage and a dc-dc back [Link]
end, although some IC manufacturers secondary-emissions and see:
manage to do it in one stage. Another • APEC 2013 Was Biggest Ever
differentiator between manufacturers • S u p e r B ow l B l a c ko u t ? Tr y
is how the feedback is accomplished. Working With A Blimp
Some IC makers have ways of getting • What’s All This About Van Gogh
around the need for optical isolation. And LEDs?
The more interesting differentiators • Dreamliners Shouldn’t Smoke
include designing ICs versatile enough • A m a t e u r- R a d i o E m e rg e n cy
to be used in all the different variations Services And Disasters
in other manufacturers’ triac dimmers

ELECTRONIC DESIGN GO TO [Link]

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