The Effect of Boundary Conditions and Material Parameters on the Temperature of High Power LEDs

Abstract

Any electronic component (with the exception of Peltier modules) will dissipate heat when in use. Depending on the amount of dissipated heat, the component temperature may increase. It is known that between 60-80% of the electrical power consumed by an LED during operation is converted to heat [1]–[8]. Generated heat becomes a major problem when the LEDs are chip-on-board or high-power because the current density increases and thermal dissipation becomes a problem that should be considered by the designers of lighting assemblies. In order to obtain the best thermal performances and to reduce the costs of obtaining a prototype, mechanical and thermoelectric models are developed and simulated. In this paper we study the way in which the material parameters and the boundary conditions affect the results of thermal simulations starting from the virtual model of a real LED presented in [1] by the author.