Light Emitting Diode (LED) is rapidly emerging as a new generation of lighting source for its distinctive advantages including long work-life, low-power consumption and environmental-friendly characteristics. It draws worldwide attention due to its broad application in lighting for film and television, nightscape lighting, traffic light, and large advertising screen.

Heat dissipation of LED, however, has been a challenge for designing high power LED products, for the optical performance and reliability of LED are greatly affected by junction temperature which should be kept under 120 °C. Many solutions including air cooling and water cooling have been put forward, most of which, however, often involve complex design process, low reliability, high-cost and poor cooling capability, preventing their commercialization and utilization.

Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (TIPC,CAS) made a breakthrough in this respect by developing a novel radiator for high power LED (200 W) using liquid mental as the coolant. The radiator can ensure LED’s operation at full load with ambient temperature of LED substrate lower than 45℃. It is less prone to pose danger compared to ordinary liquid that may exert extraordinary heavy pressure due to phase transition at a high temperature, as the liquid mental can keep being liquid state even at 2300℃.

It has been tested that liquid metal cooling may serve as an ideal solution for heat dissipation of high power LED with such advantages as high thermal conductivity, high reliability, and low-power consumption.

The work has received grants from CAS and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Mental Liquid Radiator for High Power LED Developed by TIPC,CAS