Benefits of LED technology

LEDs or light-emitting diodes have potentially replaced the traditional light source because of their cost and size advantages. Initially it was used as indicator lamps in various electronic devices. However, the continuous development of LED technology had led to the adoption of this technology in all types of general lighting.

LEDs are extremely energy efficient and can consume up to 90% less energy than conventional fluorescent bulbs. As such, they help greatly reduce energy costs. Due to low power consumption, LEDs are becoming popular light sources in remote areas using solar panels. LEDs also have a long lifespan of up to 60,000 hours compared to 1,500 hours for light bulbs. In addition, they are durable and can withstand shocks, vibrations and extreme temperatures. You can also improve safety by using LEDs, as they produce 3.4 btu per hour compared to 85 for incandescent bulbs.

People use LEDs in a variety of applications, including residential lighting, aerospace, architectural lighting, automotive, aviation, broadcasting, electronic instrumentation, entertainment and games, and more.

Especially in the microprojection system, the use of LED optics will increase over the years. This is because uniformity and lighting efficiency in spatial light modulators or SLMs are the two most important factors in measuring microprojection system performance. People often use conical light tube (TLP) and square compound parabolic concentrator (SCPC) as a beam shaper in an LED-based microprojection system. With this, you get SLM with uniform and efficient lighting.

However, TLP or SCPC has some disadvantages, the main one being insufficient compactness induced by the working length of TLP or SCPC for the lighting system. To overcome this problem, TIR or Total Internal Reflection lenses can be used.

TIR lens definition

TIR or Total Internal Reflection lenses are cone-shaped lenses that generally have rotational symmetrical designs to distribute light in a rounded pattern. You can use the TIR lens to collimate the light or to generate a preferred uniform illumination.

TIR lens manufacturing process

During the manufacture of TIR lenses, designers often do not pay attention to color uniformity, which also limits their application. However, you can address this problem by using efficient color mixing and using an integrated phosphor-converted white LED module with a compact modified freeform for compact size and high angular color uniformity (ACU).

Manufacturers design total internal reflection lenses with an optimization method to combine and transfer most of the light emitted by the LED optics to a rectangular or RTP objective plane representing SLM. Typically the TIR lens has six surfaces controlled by seventeen dimensional parameters. The design is carried out by optimizing the dimensional parameters with general algorithms. To keep the RTP in an immovable position with pleasant lighting uniformity and efficiency, designers consider the lighting uniformity and efficiency in RTP during the optimization process.

In the Tracepro program, the result of the simulation of the LED lighting system with the optimized TIR lens shows that the efficiency and uniformity of the lighting has reached 61.9%, 76% considering the angle of limitation of the light (15 degrees ).

You can manufacture these lenses for multiple LED applications. Manufacturing different sizes of TIR lenses depends on their optical performance, so FWHM angles, etc. cannot be specified.