Increasing the reliability of solid state lighting systems via self-healing approaches: A review

Reliability issues in solid state lighting (SSL) devices based on light emitting diodes (LED) is of major concern as it is a limiting factor to promote these optoelectronic devices for general lighting purposes. This postulate is even truer for high power devices in which high current and thus high thermal load are involved. In order to increase reliability and lighting efficacy. LED designs related to thermal management are evolving parallel to LED research and development. However there are still some issues mainly related to the degradation of LED's constituents with time involving a faster decay of the lightning efficacy. In order to increase reliability of SSL devices, components presenting self-repairing properties could be implemented. In this review we will first briefly expose the state of the art on inorganic semiconductor based LED research and development, trends and challenges that lead to an increase of lighting efficiency. In a second part the different failure mode occurring for SSL devices have been compiled highlighting what are the main mechanism influencing and limiting LED reliability. Strong from this knowledge, in the last part, self-healing concepts will be proposed to further improve LED's reliability. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.