For many years, the automotive industry has been migrating from classic bulbs, adding halogens, to increasingly powerful, more efficient, physically more powerful and longer-lasting LEDs. This transition began with red soft brakes, and more recently those assets have taken on an increasing role in turn signals and headlights, with many top trim styles now sporting LED matrix generation allowing for superior beam adaptable. Now, the Matrix LED generation is taking a leap forward, thanks to a component partnership between two giants in our industry, Nichia and Infineon. Earlier this year, they introduced an incredibly compact headlight light source that’s mirrorless, the popular one for the HD matrix generation, and packed with many, many more LEDs than ever before. This product, based on Nichia’s expertise in LEDs and Infineon’s pedigree in drive electronics, is described through this pair as a smooth micropixelated solution. It enters a market position that is beginning to see LED matrix generation stretching from high-end cars to the likes of VW, as well as some Opel stylings, that place a premium on smooth performance. The number of LEDs in matrix LED heads in a road position can be as few as 8, although arrays housing 70, 84, or 102 LEDs are also common. “84 pixels is a very smart solution in terms of matrix smoothing of the road,” comments Robert Remmers, Infineon’s product line manager for the co-evolved automotive light engine that houses thousands of microLEDs. “However, what consumers want is finer smooth dimming or finer smooth control on the road. ” Remmers adds that with 16,384 microLEDs, his collaboration’s automotive light engine provides all of this and more: safe footprints on the road, where you want to cross a construction site, or have light for pedestrians at the edge of the road. Another strong point of the new automotive light source over the current one is its mode of operation. This difference is comparable to the difference between LCD and OLED TVs: in the former, all pixels are on all the time, while in the latter they are only on when desired, thus saving energy. In addition to requiring the LEDs to be constantly on, the same old form of HD matrix heads is compromised by the addition of mirrors, leading to bulky assemblies. Remmers likens their length to that of a brick, adding that they are also expensive, heavy and difficult to implement. “If you take a look at our solution, it’s essentially a small chip,” enthuses Remmers, who suggests that the length of this unit is roughly twice that of a PC mouse. The new light source was put to the test in test drives. “You can see it’s very bright,” says Remmers, who attributes the exceptional intensity of the soft projection to the higher driving currents of microLEDs, as well as their peak efficiency. If even brighter light sources are desired, automakers can also simply use laser technology, a generation pioneered by BMW and Audi. However, this elegance of headgentles failed to gain much traction in the market. This is possibly because its ability to remove the darkness from several hundred meters of road only comes at a great price when driving at speeds higher than those permitted in many countries. Many drivers might argue that it is actually more useful to have a higher smoothing constancy over a shorter range, a feature provided by the Micro-Pixelated smoothing solution. It took Nichia and Infineon 3 years to jointly develop and launch their revolutionary automotive smoothing. engine. While some may think that’s a long time, it’s not when you do all the work it takes to get a product into position for the automotive market. This industry is famous for its rigorous and conservative technique for component qualification. Another thing to take into account is the point of innovation that was required to bring this very particular product to the market. Part of the progression involved Nichia designing a new 50µm through 50µm microLED to ensure it would take the darkness out of the road with enough brightness. Both components then had to work together to ensure a physically powerful enough connection between the transmitters and the driving force IC chip, produced by Infineon. “If you know all of those things, I would say it’s literally amazing how we’ve managed to do this,” says Remmers. Product ownership belongs to Nichia; is guilty of driving sales. The first style to be supplied with the revolutionary headgentle will not come from Asia, but from Europe. This comes as no surprise to Remmers, who stresses the pinnacle of innovation brought to European luxury cars. “It’s just a herbal evolution that started here in this componential case. “
The new automotive lighting engine, which features 16,384 microLEDs, builds on Nichia’s LED prowess and Infineon’s expertise in silicon IC electronics.
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