Expo Shanghai Shows Off Mainland China's LED Industry

Historically, the World Exposition has always been a superb stage for inventors to show off their latest lighting technology. The 1878 event in Pairs highlighted incandescent bulbs invented by Tomas Edison, and the 1939 fair in New York featured fluorescent technology. The present Shanghai Expo, which is running six months beginning on May 1, is focusing on light emitting diode (LED) technology.

An estimated 1.03 billion LED chips are lighting up 80% of the buildings, pavilions, road signs, billboards, display screens, and landscapes at Shanghai Expo area, which covers a total of 5.28 square kilometers. Indeed, the current event is being touted as “marking the beginning year of solid-state lighting”.

Never has an event deployed LED applications on such a large scale. Among the applications on show is a huge LED screen mounted around the Saudi Arabian Pavilion, a 91- by 47-meter ship-like structure. Inside the German Pavilion, a gigantic globe displays various images using 400,000 LED matrixes. On the exterior of the Dutch Pavilion LED lights glitter at night to create a fun mood. The red walls of the Chinese Pavilion are decorated with LED lights at night, and the fairytale pictures in the Danish Pavilion are also made up of LED lights.

The Puxi District of the expo area has a road paved with LED tiles which display information on the expo and color pictures that change with time.

Compared with incandescent bulbs, LEDs can realize energy savings of 90%. LED lights combined with solar power reduce carbon-diode emissions in the expo area by 30%, underscoring the “ecological friendliness and low carbon emissions” of the expo.

Although mainland China is already a leading LED supplier in terms of production scale, it lags behind the international leaders in epi-wafer and chip technologies. Thus, all of the Chinese-made LED lighting fixtures at the expo use imported chips.

According to the China Association of Lighting Industry, epi wafers and chips account for 70% of the profits produced in the LED supply chain, while packaging accounts for only 30%. So far, no homegrown LED manufacturers in the mainland are capable of making the epi wafers on which LED circuits are laid to form chips. There are some local chipmakers, to be sure, but they mostly turn out products rated at low and mid wattages. High-watt products are beyond their capability.

Lu We, a specialist with the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, a unit of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, points out that the lack of a universal industry standard has prevented the mainland from growing into an LED-technology power. He hopes that the mainland authorities will use the momentum created by Shanghai Expo to accelerate the development of their LED industry.

Lu notes that the large-scale applications of LED technology on the expo grounds mean day-to-day application of LED technology is imminent.

Senior experts at the Shanghai Research Center of Engineering and Technology for Solid-state Lighting say that LED lamps will enter Chinese homes in big way in three to five years, following the introduction of several bold LED projects. The projects include “Ten Thousand Lights in Ten Cities” mapped out by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, which will use LED lights for public-works projects in 21 cities. In addition, the Shanghai Municipal Government has designated LED lamps as the main lighting products for many of the city's public-works projects, and the central government has introduced a slew of measures to bring down the cost of LED lighting fixtures to acceptable levels.

Lu Rongshu, deputy director of the Shanghai Institute of Quality Inspection and Technical Research, points out although LEDs are already used intensively in the mainland's outdoor lighting projects, indoor applications remain in the infant stage because of technological immaturity and expensive prices. (Sept. 2010)