Novel technology to increase pot life of Silicones used in LED components

MATERIALS

Researchers at the MATERIALS Institute developed a formulation for a Silicone elastomer that can lead to significantly reduced production costs for LED components. JOANNEUM RESEARCH is looking for partners in the LED, phosphor and silicone market to exploit the potential of this technology.

Credit: JOANNEUM RESEARCH/ Paul Patter

Most LED components use special silicones (PDMS) as matrix for the colour conversion phosphors, or as the favourite material for primary optical lenses attached to the LED package.

In LED production, two-component systems are used that start curing immediately after they are mixed. The mixture usually has a pot life limited to a maximum of few hours at room temperature, which leads to serious practical and technological limitations for its use.

Researchers at the JOANNEUM RESEARCH Institute MATERIALS have developed a novel method for stabilizing PDMS elastomers.

Credit: JOANNEUM RESEARCH/ Sabine Suppan

Using this technology, the pot life of silicon mixtures (including colour conversion phosphors) of a few hours can be extended to several months. This is reducing the processing efforts and increasing the yield of colour conversion material in LED-production considerably. After deposition, normal curing occurs at temperatures even below 80°C, leading to a fast and complete curing. No changes of optical properties of the PDMS and the LED components are observed.

A specific advantage of this approach is that the modified silicones can be mixed with colour conversion phosphors in rather large batches, increasing the accuracy and consistency of the colour conversion pastes.

The novel technology is patent pending. We are looking for partners in the LED, phosphor and PDMS market to exploit the potential of this technology.

More information:

Find out more from our experts: supresil@joanneum.at