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LED Cooling: Glossary and Links

Below is a glossary of commonly used phrases related to solid state lighting and LED thermal management. At the end of the page are links to LED cooling articles and resources.

→ Active cooling

In active cooling, a fan is directed to blow over or through a passive heat sink. This results in more air being blown through the heat sink, increasing the rate at which the heat sink can exchange heat with the ambient air.

→ Active thermal management

See "active cooling."

→ CPU spot cooler

A mechanism that draws heat away from a CPU chip by directing precise streams of cool air over the hot chip.

→ High power, high brightness LED

LED's built with wide bandgap to enable brighter solid state lighting. These white LED's require more intensive cooling solutions than a passive (heat sink) solution can provide standalone. SynJet® cooling is a critical component in bringing to market products using high brightness LED's.

→ Philips Fortimo

The Fortimo LED DLM system consists of an LED module and a driver, with a cable (optional) designed for use in new luminaires together with a heat sink. The Fortimo driver is one of the most efficient on the market. This results in a system efficacy (LED module and driver), in 2008, of up to 62 lm/W at 4000K and with a color rendering of 80. This is comparable to a bare LED efficiency of 110 lm/W.

→ LED

The light-emitting diode (LED), a type of semiconductor, generates light when an electric current is passed through positive and negative materials. Energy is given off in the form of heat and light. Different colors and greater efficiency are created by altering the composition of the material. Typically, a compact fluorescent bulb uses about 20 percent of the energy needed for a standard bulb to create the same amount of light. Today's LEDs use about 15 percent. Next-generation LEDs still in the labs do even better.

→ LED cooling, LED thermal management

LED thermal management refers to the need to provide cooling in LED lighting designs in order to achieve brightness sufficient for general illumination. Lowering temperatures through LED cooling enables designers to put twice as much power into the same form factor, allowing an average LED lighting solution that emits 500 lumens to emit 1000 lumens, a 100 percent improvement.

Passive cooling, the historic choice of the lighting industry, cannot cool LEDs to a point where they can produce enough lumens to be used in these general illumination applications. Active cooling through synthetic jet technology can double or triple the light output of a single fixture.

→ LED DLM

The LED down light module (LED DLM) is a type of LED lighting used for general illumination and accent lighting

→ LED heat sink

Heat sinks provide a path for heat from the LED source to an outside medium. Heat sinks can dissipate power in three ways: conduction (heat transfer from one solid to another), convection (heat transfer from a solid to a moving fluid, for most LED applications the fluid will be air), or radiation (heat transfer from two bodies of different surface temperatures through electromagnetic waves).

→ Solid state lighting

Same as LED lighting

→ Spot cooler

A spot cooler directs streams of cool air precisely to the area needing thermal management.

→ SynJet®

Synthetic jet modules create jets of air that can be directed to precise locations for spot cooling. SynJet technology applied to LED lighting allows brighter LED lighting applications to come to market sooner. In other applications, metallic heat sinks conduct heat away from electronic components and into the air, and then a small fan blows the hot air out. SynJet modules replace cooling fans for such devices as microprocessors, memory chips, graphics chips, batteries, and radio frequency components. SynJet™ cooling offers increased system reliability in several ways. First, the SynJet cooler itself is highly reliable. Containing no frictional parts to rub or wear, it is inherently reliable when properly designed from carefully selected materials. When used as the sole air mover, SynJets offer over 300,000 hours of L10 life at 60°C.

Check out these additional resources and articles related to solid state lighting and SynJet LED thermal management:

Solid state lighting using SynJet LED thermal management opens up bright opportunities for general illumination. From LED down light modules (LED DLM) to customized applications like those for Philips Fortimo / Philips Lexel, SynJet cooling controls thermals unlike any preceding technology – allowing LEDs to emerge as leaders in commercial and residential markets.

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