Reliability Enhancement by Thermal

Th
Design and Stress Evaluation Method of
SMPS for LED Lighting Application
SungSoon Choi, WooYoung Lee
Korea Electronics Technology Institute, Reliability Technology Research Center
css8032@ keti.re.kr, lwy607@naver.com

Abstract
Recently commercial LED bulbs are being widely
distributed. Short application history means
insufficient reliability data that needs long term
experiences. Commercial LED lighting system should
be low cost and highly reliable. Generally cost and
reliability are tend to mutually conflictive. Mostly
lifetime of LED lighting system is focused on high
temperature stress of LED chip. But power converting
module may be more decisive of LED lighting lifetime.
Fortunately, high temperature stress is the common
reason of degradation. It should be thermally well
constructed and thermal stress should be quantitatively
evaluated.
Keywords: thermal, led, smps, power.

1. Introduction
LED lighting system is recently substituting
existing lights. The lifetime of GaN LED chip is
known that lifetime is more than several tens of
thousand hours. But electrolytic capacitor has much
less lifetime than the LED chip. High temperature
stresss is the most major factor determining life-time
life
of
the capacitor. Consequently, thermal design is key
issue for insuring long term reliability of LED lighting.
Popular LED bulbs in the market include LED chips
and power converting circuit internally. Both
Bot parts are
heat generating device. Supplemental heat
h
evacuating
device like heat-sink
sink is needed. Heat flow should be
continuous and not be resistive. Major three heat
flowing mechanisms are radiation, conduction and
convection. Structurally, convection is
i too hard to
realize for conventional commercial bulb.
bulb And
radiation is not relatively effective than conduction for
the low temperature range.
DUT information used for this research is as below.
Power converting circuit is constructed on the PCB,
and LED chips are mounted on opposite side of the

PCB for cost reduction. Additional metal PCB for the

LED mounting raises manufacturing cost. Both are
heat generating sources on one PCB,
PCB and it makes hard
to cool down major reliability concerned components.
Electrolytic capacitor and LED chip are most well
known components that life-time
life
reduces at high
temperature.

2. Thermal evaluation
Internal junction temperature can be estimated by
measuring forward
d voltage drop(VF). Higher junction
temperature induces lower VF. Junction temperature
can be estimated by measuring VF at the beginning of
the current pulse before self heating occurs. Rising
time of the pulse signal should be instantaneous for
fearing self-heating.
heating. Fig. 1 shows possibility of
predicting junction temperature by measuring VF drop.
Cold start showed bigger VF drop. And micro-seconds
level transient thermal response was not
no occurred (Fig
2). If once the DUT is heated, it takes several minutes
to cool down the LED module.

(a) Cold start

3. Proposed Structure & Analysis

(b) Hot start

Fig 1. VF change at cold vs hot start moment
Actual VF shift occurs in milli-second
milli
level.
Thermal simulation for usual LED module showed
corresponding result[1]. Thermal response by selfself
heating showed approximately 1ms delay.
41

0.20

36

0.18
0.16
0.14

26

0.12

21

0.10

16

0.08

Current(A)

Voltage(V)

31

Fig 3. Original artwork(Front

rtwork(Front & Back)

0.06

11

0.04

0.02

0.00
0

10

20

30

40

Time(s)

40

0.20

35

0.18

Fig 4.. Temp. distribution of LED module

0.16

30

0.14

25

0.12

20

0.10

15

0.08

Current(A)

Voltage(V)

For uniform current distribution, eleven LED chips

are connected in series. It means each LED chip cant
can
be connected to ground pad which is most commonly
used for heat spreading. Additional pad is located near
the LED chip to shorten the heat flow path.
path The viahole is connected to backside ground pad which is
widely patterned. Backside ground pad is attached to
outer metal frame by thermal tape for heat conduction.
Fig 4 shows that generated heat is not conduced to the
ground pad effectively.
One of most import heat flow path for electronic
device is conduction. And most superior conducting
material is metal. To maximize thermal conduction,
each LED packages are connected
connect to the backside by
metal(Fig 6).

Proposed structure is as below Fig. 5. Pad for

cathode is connected to backside ground pad by metal.
Then backside ground pad is electrically
elec
isolated, and
it is used only for heat spreading and conducting.

0.06

10

0.04

0.02

0.00
0

0.0002

0.0004

0.0006

0.0008

0.001

Time(s)

Fig 2. Transient response of VF

JESD51-1
1 recommends how to measure thermal
characteristics of semiconductor devices. Key
technology is heating and measuring VF, it is needed
non-heating
heating fast reading at measuring state. In this
work, VF change was monitored without inducing
sensing-current because applied current level was not
high enough to induce transient thermal response.

Fig 5. Proposed artwork(Front

rtwork(Front & Back)

(a)

(b)

Fig 6. Cross section of proposed artwork

Temperature at the newly constructed area is lower

than original artwork area by approximately 5 (Fig
7). Temperature measurement by thermo-couple
showed identical result.

References
[1] J. Kim, B. Ma, Study on the variation of temperature for
Tj measurement in LED package, Photonics Conference, pp.
561-562, 2010.
[2] Sam G. Parler, Deriving Life Multipliers for Electrolytic
Capacitors, IEEE Power Electronics Society Newsletter, vol.
16, no. 1, pp. 11-12, February 2004.
[3] Lei Han and Nadarajah Narendran, Developing an
Accelerated Life Test Method for LED Drivers, Ninth
International Conference on Solid State Lighting, 2009.

Fig 7. Temp. distribution comparison

Table 1. Temperature distribution
Position

Before()

After()

Difference()

1
2
3
4
5
6
7*

70.6
70.6
70.4
71.5
72.7
71.8
32.2

68.8
67.5
67.3
65.3
68.1
68.6
27.2

1.8
3.1
3.1
6.2
4.6
3.2
5.0

* : Electrolytic capacitor

4. Conclusion
Generally higher temperature means lower lifetime
of the devices, especially for electrolytic capacitor and
semiconductor device. So thermal design is extremely
important for highly reliable product. LED bulb needs
built-in power converting circuit with LED chips, it is
essential reason of high cost and short-term lifetime. It
is well known that lifetime of electrolytic capacitor
decreases half for every 10 temperature rise[2].
Even though LED chips guarantee long term lifetime,
whole lifetime of LED bulb may be limited by
relatively short lifetime of electrolytic capacitor.
Conclusively, thermal design is very critical for the
lifetime of LED bulb, and quantitative evaluation of
thermal stress. In this work it was studied optimum
thermal layout and how to evaluate quantitative
thermal stress. Stress evaluation of electrolytic
capacitor and more detailed junction temperature
monitoring method are remained as further works.