Analysis of the current situation and future prospects of three new LED application fields in 2015

In 2014, due to the weakening of the overall domestic economic situation, the slowdown in the growth rate of the upstream real estate industry and the reduction of engineering projects, domestic monetary tightening and difficulty in obtaining loans, export trade also continued to decline due to the failure of the European economy to recover. Various unfavorable factors have swept through the LED lighting industry, which is in the "expansion period", and the lighting market is relatively deserted. Facing the deserted LED market, what other options do LED companies have?

Recently, Sui Shirong, director of the Guangdong Provincial Semiconductor Lighting Industry Joint Innovation Center, said: In 2015, LED will have three new application directions worthy of attention. The first is visible light communication. In August this year, we will join forces with LED optical communication pioneers from the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom, as well as dozens of domestic universities, leading enterprises in the communications and LED industries, to jointly seek a new direction for the development of visible light communication technology. It will be a trend; the second is ultraviolet LED, which has It has sterilization and disinfection functions and can be widely used in printing-related industries, medical and other fields; the third is agricultural lighting, which can not only change the traditional agricultural production method and promote the upgrading of the agricultural industry, but also bring new market opportunities to the original LED industry, which may be a trillion-level market.

Faced with fierce market competition, most LED companies are looking for new ways out! Perhaps the "three major" new application fields of visible light communication, ultraviolet LED, and agricultural lighting are one direction! But what is its development status? What is its future development?

Visible light communication

In the eyes of the public, light bulbs are only one of the important components of lighting. Nowadays, as the public's requirements for lighting technology continue to increase and attention to lighting safety is increasing, visible light communication technology has emerged. LED light bulbs developed based on visible light communication technology have grown into intelligent lighting equipment with multiple meanings and uses such as lighting, communication, and cross-border applications. LED light bulbs are more than just light bulbs.

Visible light communication uses visible light to transmit communication signals and is a "green" revolution for the future development of the communications industry. Its core technology is realized through LED lights, which can turn on and off quickly, flash at a very high frequency, and can undertake the task of sending information.

Wearable devices developed based on visible light communication technology will be widely popularized in the future, and the concept of smart lighting will also penetrate into all aspects of daily life, including smart home decoration, agricultural lighting, medical applications and other fields.

LED lighting wireless communication is still in the exploratory and initial stages at home and abroad, but it has shown attractive application prospects. It can not only be used for indoor wireless access, but also provide a new method for mobile navigation and positioning of urban vehicles. Car lighting basically uses LED lights, which can form communication lines between cars and traffic control centers, traffic lights to cars, and cars to cars. In the future, through visible light communication technology, it will also be possible to surf the Internet and make phone calls on airplanes.

At present, visible light communication has become a battleground in the field of international communication research in the United States, Japan, Europe and other countries. After my country’s 863 Program deployed visible light communication technology research in 2011, after several years of scientific and technological research, a number of important research results have been achieved in terms of modulation bandwidth expansion, real-time transmission rate, and converged network architecture.

Recently, Qinshang Optoelectronics stated that its optical communication research and development has released a laboratory version and can basically realize the application principle. However, there is still a lot of room for technical improvement and corresponding R&D investment before the product application level. Market application promotion and feasibility are still in the evaluation process, and the application prospects are promising.

Also, the technical team of Professor Chi Nan of Fudan University signed an enterprise settlement agreement with the Moling Science and Technology Innovation Center. The LED visible light communication project led by Professor Chi Nan has officially settled in Moling Street, Nanjing City, and will start the industrialization process. Professor Chi Nan's LED visible light communication technology is an international cutting-edge wireless communication technology that uses indoor visible light to transmit network signals. Currently, Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries and regions are stepping up research and development of this technology. It is a technological revolution in visible light transmission. According to the relevant person in charge of the Moling Talent Office, the operation of this technology is very convenient. As long as the network signal is connected to a 1W LED lamp bead, four computers under the light can access the Internet. The maximum speed can reach 3.25G, and the average Internet speed will also reach 150M. It is called the world's fastest "light Internet" and is now affectionately called "LiFi" by netizens.

At the Foshan LED Lighting Industry Exchange Conference, Dr. Luo Jianghua, deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Semiconductor Lighting Industry Joint Innovation Center, said that LED visible light communications may be promoted and applied in 2018. Marketandmarkets analyzed industry data and predicted that the LiFi industry will grow to at least US$9 billion (approximately 55.926 billion yuan) before 2020. These all indicate that LED visible light communication has broad prospects.

UV LED

In 2014, blue LED won the Nobel Prize and became the focus of the world. The three winners have also frequently made headlines in major media. In addition to their contribution to the invention of blue-light LED, the three winners are now further conducting research in their respective fields. Among them, the ultraviolet LED (UVLED) research that Hiroshi Amano is currently engaged in is gradually being taken seriously by the industry. It is also considered to be another new application of LED after white light. The prospect is very optimistic.

According to statistics, the overall UV (ultraviolet) market size reached US$815 million (equivalent to approximately RMB 5.012 billion) in 2014, of which UV LED output value was US$122 million (equivalent to approximately RMB 750 million), accounting for 15% of the overall UV market.

However, industry insiders said that unlike the progress of LED lighting from laboratories to high-level industrialization, there is still much room for improvement in technical details such as the efficiency of ultraviolet LEDs. Like the technical difficulties encountered in the process of LED lighting industrialization, efficiency is one of the most important indicators for quantifying the progress of industrial development. It is understood that the effective sterilization efficiency of high-pressure mercury lamps is 5% to 8%. The laboratory level of efficiency of UV LEDs less than 280nm has reached 10%, but the industrialization level is only 2%.

Whether it is a traditional light source or an LED light source, from blue light to deep ultraviolet light (Deep UV), as the wavelength gradually shortens from 365nm to 280nm, the preparation difficulty is increasing. For LED light sources, the shortening of the wavelength means that the proportion of doped GaAlN gradually increases, which makes the conductivity of the P-type material worse and worse, making it difficult to improve the efficiency of the device.

In addition to the high technical threshold, the business model of UV LED applications is also being explored, and it is unknown when the market will accept new light source applications on a large scale.

The current UV LED field is very close to the early stage of LED lighting development. There is a "chicken-and-egg" relationship between market demand and the number of enterprises. Therefore, many companies that are optimistic about the UV LED market segment still remain on the sidelines and are unwilling to spend money to "test the waters." However, as market demand expands, more companies will pay attention to UV LED and participate in this field. This is an inevitable trend.

The high technical threshold and scarce equipment make the survival of UV LED companies always rely on "blood replenishment". Since the technology and price have not yet reached the opportunity to enter the market on a large scale, it is still a long time before the market returns. Before that, companies need a large amount of investment to maintain R&D costs and equipment investment. Moreover, the country currently does not have relevant financial policy support and mainly relies on market-oriented venture capital. It is gratifying that the current national 863 plan has attached great importance to UV LED technology and approved projects. This will drive companies to pay attention, and naturally more companies will participate.

At present, UV LED is rarely used in ordinary civilian channels. First, because the technology has not yet been mass-produced, and secondly, users’ usage habits have not yet formed a demand for portable disinfection. However, once the efficiency of UV LED is improved, this technology will provide an important foundation for convenient and safe bacterial sterilization equipment.

Just as LED lighting replaces traditional lighting, when it comes to UV LED, more people will think of when high-pressure mercury lamps will be replaced by UV LED. Previously, high-pressure mercury lamps for medical use have been used on a large scale in medical disinfection, public health and other fields. However, due to the properties of the mercury lamp itself, mercury lamps cannot be used in many fields. In these fields, UV LED has room for development. It is reported that the current functions of UV LED include clean water sterilization, such as drinking water sterilization, fish tank sterilization and drinking utensil sterilization lamps; air sterilization will be applied to products such as air conditioners, humidifiers, air purifiers and UV photocatalyst purifiers, as well as food aseptic processing and packaging, catering and surface sterilization, such as refrigerators, disinfection cabinets and other home appliances.

Also, there are currently very few people using UV LED for hospital disinfection and disease treatment. It will take a long time for hospitals to accept the use of UV LED. Different from its function of disinfection and sterilization, the topic of UV LED used for medical treatment has not yet been applied to clinical applications on a large scale. As an emerging technology, especially what benefits and harms it will have to the human body beyond the visible light of the human eye, more demonstrations and experiments are needed to ensure that this technology can be used as a medical treatment method. However, it is worthy of recognition that UV LED has expanded its uses and markets to a wider range of applications than high-pressure mercury lamp UV. It can be speculated that whether it is technology or business model, UV LED still needs to be brewed and explored, waiting for the market to explode.

Agricultural lighting

Agricultural lighting is an important segment of LED lighting, and its future market space cannot be underestimated. Many experts from the semiconductor lighting industry and agricultural experts have stated that intelligent lighting and precise control of light links are inevitable trends in the development of modern facility agriculture science and technology. LED agricultural lighting may become a new generation of artificial light source for modern facility agriculture.

With the continuous development of modern agriculture, the demand for agricultural lighting is expanding, followed by a substantial increase in power consumption. This not only poses a challenge to traditional agricultural lighting technology, but also provides great opportunities for the development and application of new agricultural lighting.

From the global market, the sales market of agricultural lighting fixtures is mainly concentrated in Japan, South Korea, the United States, Europe and other countries and regions with fewer agricultural personnel. At present, there are many LED plant factories abroad that can realize mass production of plants.

According to a global industry survey, the global output value of LED plant growth lights has begun to show rapid growth since 2013. It is expected to exceed US$35 million in 2014 and is expected to reach US$300 million in 2017. Some international giants have increased their investment in innovation in LED plant factories.

Not only foreign lighting companies, but also the domestic lighting market has a "plant style". It is understood that my country's current LED plant lighting industry is growing rapidly with a market growth rate of 20%, and more than 50% of LED lighting companies are doing research and development related to LED plant lighting. In the past 10 years, my country's facility horticulture area has developed rapidly, and light environment control technology for plant growth has attracted attention. The greenhouse planting and flower industries in Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Henan and other areas have been quite mature, so LED plant lights have great market potential.

Although its development prospects are promising, the LED plant light market is still in its infancy, and its application in the field of plant growth still has problems such as higher cost and poor light penetration. Agricultural lighting fixtures also have problems such as product clutter, irregular production design, and lack of unified product standards and quality management.

In addition, the biggest difficulty in agricultural lighting is how to apply and promote the products produced, because LED plant lamps need to be customized with a combination of red and blue light and related optical ratios based on the growth characteristics and cycles of each plant. In many cases, they can only be produced on a small scale based on the customer's customized characteristics.

In order to solve the above problems, the country should increase the research and development of LED agricultural lighting products, form a batch of internationally advanced products with distinctive advantages, and cultivate a batch of scientific research institutes and leading enterprises with core competitiveness. In terms of standards, more investigation and research should be conducted from the two aspects of LED agricultural light source research and development and practical application, and agricultural LED light source standards that are conducive to industry development and product development should be formulated.

Summary

In 2015, with the fierce competition in the domestic LED lighting market, the development of the industry will eliminate a large number of small-scale, uncompetitive companies through the survival of the fittest. Faced with the fierce market competition environment, what can companies do to remain invincible? Perhaps developing new application areas is a way out! From the analysis of LED application status and trends, it can be seen that the development of the three new LED application fields of visible light communication, ultraviolet LED, and agricultural lighting has broad market prospects, and it is also a new choice for LED companies to take a differentiated route!