Chapter 6 Applications for High-Brightness Light-Emitting Diodes

Publisher Summary This chapter describes five new applications in which the highly efficient aluminium gallium arsenide (AlGaAs), Aluminium gallium indium phosphide (AlInGaP), and indium gallium nitride (InGaN) light-emitting diodes (LED) materials technologies can be utilized. The chapter features a different set of applications and discusses the traditional methods of lighting, the benefits that LED technology provides, and some of the design issues of the LED approach. These applications include automotive lighting-both signal lighting on the exterior of the vehicle as well as indicator lighting within the vehicle. Another application that is discussed is traffic signal lighting-both red/yellow/bluegreen traffic signals and pedestrian cross-walk traffic signals. Large-area displays are discussed. These displays range in size from airport status boards to stadium scoreboards and can be designed for monochrome, bicolor, or full-color operation with full-motion video capabilities. The final application that is discussed is LCD backlighting for transmissive and transflective liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Again, monochrome, bicolor, and full-color applications are discussed. These new LED materials technologies are already commercially available in a number of new products in these five featured applications. Together, these five new applications are the newest frontiers for LED technology and can be expected to be responsible for considerable growth in the LED semiconductor industry.