UV LED has a bright future and the market size will reach US$500 million in 2019

Ultraviolet LED (UV LED) has established a market in the past five years in the field of hardening, drying, and bonding using ultraviolet light, that is, UV curing. UV LEDs have the advantages of high UV output power, small size and low power consumption, bringing great value to the UV system market and the users of these systems.

Due to their small size and low operating costs, equipment equipped with UV LEDs has begun to rapidly replace the original technology using mercury lamps, causing the UV LED market in the UV curing business to continue to expand. In 2008, the entire UV LED market was only US$20 million, but in 2014 it expanded to US$90 million, with an average annual growth rate (CAGR) of as high as 28.5%.

A new era is about to begin

French research company Yole Developpement (hereinafter referred to as Yole) stated that disinfection and purification will become the key to the growth of the UV LED market in the next three years.

With the expansion of UV curing technology using UV LED into the ink, adhesive and coating industries, the UV LED market is expected to further expand. In addition, new uses such as disinfection and purification have been added. Currently, the performance of UV LEDs is not sufficient when used for disinfection and purification purposes. However, with the improvement of performance in the future, it is estimated that part of the revenue of the UV LED market before 2018 will come from the use of UVC (UV-C band) for disinfection and purification purposes.

The UV LED market size is expected to expand from a maximum of US$90 million in 2014 to a maximum of US$500 million in 2019. But this field is based on the assumption that UV LED will replace the standard application of ultraviolet lamps. If you consider that UV LEDs are also beginning to be used in general lighting, plant cultivation lighting, biomedical devices, and nosocomial infection countermeasures, the UV LED market is likely to achieve greater growth in the future. And judging from the possibilities of UV LED, lighting and medical uses only represent a small part of it. Although the new application areas of UV LED have not yet had a big impact on the market size, Yole predicts that the share of these new applications will likely account for about 10% of the entire UV LED market by 2019.

Large enterprises are involved in the UV LED market

In 2008, there were only about 10 companies developing and manufacturing UV LEDs. Since then, more than 50 companies have entered the UV LED market (30 of them between 2012 and 2014). Most of these companies have entered the UV LED market attracted by high profitability. At that time, the "LED TV crisis" led to increasingly prominent overcapacity and downward pressure on prices in the visible light LED industry, which hit the industry hard. This created an opportunity for the above-mentioned companies to get involved in the UV LED market.

Most of the new companies involved are small and medium-sized LED companies. But what is worthy of attention recently is that many large companies in the visible light LED industry (Philips Lumileds Lighting Company of the United States and LG Innotek of South Korea) have begun to get involved in the UV LED business. The involvement of these two large companies will have a huge impact on the UV LED industry, market and even technological progress. Philips Lumileds and LG Innotek both have high-level expertise cultivated through visible light LEDs.

Philips Lumileds Lighting Company and LG Innotek Company have basically completely transitioned the LED production process to 6-inch sapphire substrates. Compared with the 2-inch process, production efficiency can be increased by at least 30%. This further reduces manufacturing costs. In addition, with knowledge related to pre-processing and packaging, the two companies can also improve the performance of UV LEDs and reduce the price per unit input power ($/W).

High efficiency is the key to market growth

The external quantum efficiency of UV LED ranges from a few percentage points of UVC to 40-50% of UVA (UV-A band) and near-ultraviolet. The progress of research and development aimed at manufacturing high-efficiency chips may become the key to the growth of the UV LED market. In fact, the efficiency of UV LED will directly affect the popularity of UV LED. In the field of purification and disinfection, which is expected to drive the growth of the UV LED market in the future, the reason why UV LED has not yet become popular is that the UVC that is recognized as necessary for this application does not achieve sufficient efficiency.

To improve external quantum efficiency, LED manufacturers must improve various parameters related to efficiency and promote technology development for this purpose. Specifically, it is to improve internal quantum efficiency, quantum injection efficiency and light extraction efficiency. At this time, efficiency improvement technologies such as flip-chip structure and optoelectronics structure that have been cultivated in the visible light LED industry for more than 10 years can be directly used in UV LED. However, UV LED has inherent issues originating from the In/AlGaN epitaxial layer, and it is necessary to promote research and development from the substrate and crystal growth levels to specifically solve this issue.

In addition to low light output power, UV LEDs also have further problems at the packaging level due to low efficiency. This is where most of the input power becomes heat. Therefore, thermal management of UV LEDs is key to improving the reliability of equipment and related systems.

In this regard, the expertise cultivated in the visible light LED industry can also play a role. Regarding UV LED related technologies, Yole summarized the development blueprint in its latest report. By introducing these technologies, UV LED is expected to open up new uses. UVLED technology is now entering a very strong growth area.