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.

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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.

LED strips have been a trendy DIY lighting solution for many applications for many years. That’s why we are so interested in the latest LED strip technology, COB flexible led strip lighting.

What is COB?

COB stands for Chip on Board in the LED field, which basically means that the LED chip is packaged directly on the circuit board (PCB). Chip on Board” LEDs for flexible strip lights are sometimes referred to as flip-chips.

Flip chip LEDs are basically a bare-bones approach to LED construction. Take a look at an ordinary SMD (Surface Mount Device) LED. It has a Lamp bead holder that package the LED chip and then covers it with a phosphor coating. The ‘flip chip’ that makes up the COB LED strip removes everything from its design, except for the LED chip, yellow phosphor cover layer, and connection pads.

How is COB LED flexible strip manufactured?

1. Expanding Chips
2. Die bonding
3. Resistors onto FPCB
4. Reflow-High temperature over 65 degrees for finished PCB with chips and resistors
5. Fluorescent Powder glue mixing
6. Drop the mixing glue on the surface of chips and resistors by auto glue machine
7. Put glued cob led strip into the oven
8. QC-testing the cob led strip after cooling
9. Soldering the PCB into 5 meters per reel or the length as customer request
10. Aging test, QC test, packing, then shipping

Advantages and Disadvantages of COB LED Flex Strips

Now that you have a basic understanding of how this new COB led strip is produced, it’s time to see its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

No LED lighting dot, even without aluminum profiles.

One of the biggest complaints about traditional LED strips is the lighting dot throughout the strip. A lighting dot is a bright area through the strip where you can see where the light is coming from. Light is more soft and attractive when it looks like a smooth light source rather than a lighting dot mess.

With 5050 SMD flex strips, the larger diodes are squeezed close enough so that the light is spread out and consistent across the illuminated surface at a distance. But if the light is too close to the surface or the strip itself is visible, the hot spot is an obstacle that the human eye cannot ignore.

With a 480 chip/M COB strip, it is pretty challenging to pick out any hot spots on the COB flex strip. This strip shines a soft, uniform light from end to end. Even light with no lighting dot is more attractive to the human eye and gives off a steady light even in the narrow places. The only natural way to see the lighting dot is to look at the back of the strip, where it is easier to see the individually placed flip-chip LEDs. You can only see the individual led if you dim strip down to about 5% brightness. This makes COB flex strips ideal for applications where

1. The led strip itself cannot be hidden from view.
2. The surface being illuminated is within 2 feet of the light bar.
3. Reflective surfaces like granite/glass are all around.
4. Those applications where you want an excellent neon effect.

More flexibility

These strips are much more flexible than other flexible strips because of the small size of the diodes and the uniform weight distribution. These diodes are so small and closely spaced that no point of the strip is the same. This uniformity makes it easy to set up the strips without planning around a 5050 SMD LED sticking out where you don’t need it. This extra flexibility will make it easier for them to fit into tight areas and turn corners in your application.

More stable, fewer problems

1. COB strip is the chip directly attached to the FPCB, does not come with gold wire. Traditional SMD LED strip, very many problems are caused by the gold wire inside the LED beads. Because the gold wire is too small, it is straightforward to be broken, leading to the chip not being illuminated.
2. The circuit design of the COB strip uses three chips, first in parallel, as a group, then each group, and then in series to form one step. Even if a group of two chips inside the bad, this one-step strip can continue to light. And COB a meter of chips how big 480, even if 1-2 chips do not light, will not produce dark areas, will not affect the use. While the traditional SMD strip, a CUT, as long as there are lousy lamp beads, this one cut will not light, so there will be obvious to see a section of the dark area.

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Wide emitting angle

The traditional SMD light strip luminous angle is 120 degrees, while the COB light strip luminous angle is 180 degrees.

Disadvantage:

1. The most significant disadvantage of COB led strips is that it is difficult to maintain the consistency of color. Because there is no COB led strips binning machines on the market. At present, all COB led strips manufacturers are only sampling to ensure color consistency. So, COB led strips are difficult to ensure that 100% are within the 3-step color tolerance.
2. COB led strip light efficiency, currently only about 120LM/W. If you need higher light efficiency, COB led strip is not suitable.
3.  The maximum power of COB led strip, only recommended doing 15W / m. Because the number of chips per meter is too much, if the power exceeds 15W / m, the chip’s heat is brutal to dissipate. COB led strip life will be shortened.

SMD encapsulation procedure – Binning

Conclusion

If you need a light effect without light spots, you can try COB led strips. If you need strict color consistency, such as 3-step Macadam color tolerance or 2-step Macadam color tolerance, or if you need high lumens, high luminous efficacy, then you can only consider the traditional SMD led strip.

Characteristics of COB Flex Strips

If you’ve been listening, the advantages and disadvantages of COB flexible light strips should be obvious, so now let’s get into some specific details about this sort of strip. If you’re acquainted with LED strips, then lots of this may sound familiar, but there are some differences during this form of strip, so it’s best to test out the guidelines below before using COB strips.

Cut and Connect

COB led strip can cut this strip just like our other strip lights. Please only cut along the cut marks marked on the strip every 50mm (24) / 25mm (12V). This allows you to cut the strip to a custom size or add gaps to your application. The cut strips can be used again and are best connected by soldering, but if this is often not an option, our COB strip connectors also are available as an option.

Dimmable

COB led strips are dimmable as well as regular SMD led strips.

You can use DALI, triac, PWM, 0-10V dimming power supply to use with COB led strips to achieve dimming.

Color Options

White light: 2700K, 3000K, 4000K, 6000K, and other custom color temperatures are available

Colorful light: Red, green, blue, yellow, pink, etc., are available.

Tunable white, RGB, RGBW are all available.

Tunable White COB led strip

RGBW COB led strip

IP grades

IP20 none waterproof, IP52 silicone drip, IP65 silicone sleeve, IP67 silicone sleeve, and other various waterproof ways are available.

COB led strip light applications

1. Architectural
2. Furniture & wine cabinet
3. Holtel renovation
4. KTV & KTV bar
5. Parking
6. shopping mall

How to install the COB led strip light? (step by step)

1. Clean the surface where you wish to put in the COB led strip light.
2. Cut the scale of the COB led strip light you would like to put in.
3. Tear the 3M backside of the COB led strip light.
4. Paste the COB strip light where you would like to put in.
5. Connect the ability supply with COB led strip light.
6. If you wish to attach the COB led strip light, you’ll be able to solder or use the connector.

After you read this article, I believe you already have a basic understanding of COB led strips. If you want to know more, please visit https://www.ledyilighting.com/all-you-need-to-know-before-buying-cob-led-strip/

Contact us to discuss your requirements of what is cree led chip. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.