News: LEDs
20 February 2024
Dowa Electronic Materials unveils SWIR LEDs with record efficiency
Dowa Electronic Materials Co Ltd of Tokyo, Japan has developed and released a high-efficiency short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) LED chip series with what is claimed to be record luminous efficiency in the peak wavelength range 1200–1900nm.
LED-based optical sensors offer smaller size, lower power consumption, and longer lifetime. In addition, near-infrared (NIR) and SWIR light is highly penetrative to organisms. SWIR LEDs can be applied to agriculture/food analysis, drug discovery and healthcare. In healthcare applications, implementing SWIR LEDs into various medical sensors enables non-destructive, non-contact and non-blood-drawing sample analysis. As a result, it reduces the load on the test subject’s body and helps the progress of protective medicine. The SWIR LED healthcare market is hence expected to grow in the future.
Figure 1. Output power at 1350nm.
Dowa has developed the SWIR LEDs based on its proprietary crystal growth and processing technologies. Due to its higher luminous efficiency, the new chip achieves 170mW output power (Figure 1) with a 1mm square chip at 1350nm, two times higher than comparable products, it is reckoned. Even at 1900nm, where it is considered difficult to improve luminous efficiency, the 1mm square chip achieves 45mW, 30% more power compared with conventional devices. Such a significant power increase can improve analysis and testing accuracy, and reduce power consumption.
In addition to the 350µm square and 1mm square chip sizes, Dowa is introducing a 250µm square version to its SWIR-LED series. When paired with a Dowa indium gallium arsenide InGaAs) photodiode already in mass production, the new SWIR LED can be used in sensors. Being offered in three different sizes, Dowa SWIR LEDs can be used in a wide range of applications, from telecoms equipment and wearables that require device miniaturization to machine vision where high radiant power is required.
