Advantages of Chip-on-Board LED vs. Surface Mount LED

What is Chip-on-Board LED Technology?

Chip-on-Board LED technology describes the mounting of a bare LED chip in direct contact with the substrate to produce LED arrays. It is a method of LED packaging which has a number of advantages over conventional technologies such as “T-pack” and Surface Mount LEDs.

What are Packaged LEDs?

An example of a packaged T-pack LED is shown below. A packaged LED has an optical lens, bonding wire, electrodes, and resin to encapsulate the LED for protection. Surface Mount Devices offer higher packing density over T-pack though still significantly less density than Chip-on-Board.

Why does Chip-on-Board offer advantages over Packaged LEDs?

Due to the small size of the LED chip relative to a packaged LED, Chip-on-Board technology (COB) allows for a much higher packing density than surface mount technology. This results in higher intensity & greater uniformity for the user.

The advantages of Chip-on-Board LED arrays are:

• Compactness, due to small size of the LED chip

• High intensity, particularly at close distances

• High uniformity, even at close working distances

• Best thermal performance for better lifetime, stability, and reliability

Illustrated Example

The figure above shows the number of LEDs that can be placed on a 10mm square area and the resulting array power. As you can see the number of LEDs that can be placed using COB technology is 38 times higher than that of T-Pack technology and 8.5 times higher than with surface mount technology.

Advantages of Chip-on-Board LED technology

The advantages of Chip-on-Board LED arrays include:

• Compactness due to small size of chip

• High-Intensity, particularly at close distance

• High-Uniformity, even at close working distances

• Superior Thermal Performance for better lifetime, stability and reliability

Conclusion

Chip-on-board LED technology offers many advantages when compared to surface-mounted LEDs. The LED packing density achievable with chip-on-board technology allows illumination providers to deliver high intensity, high uniformity, and compact solutions ideal for a wide range of applications. ProPhotonix utilizes more than 25 years of experience in Chip-on-Board technology to provide COB solutions for OEMs and system integrators worldwide.