During the past few years, there was an expectation in the industry for LED to replace all traditional lighting; therefore the projection of the market size was huge. For example, there are 800,000 units of mercury vapor street lamps in Taiwan that needed to be replaced. Taking into account the high pressure sodium lamps, more than 1.5million lamps have yet to be replaced, in Taiwan alone.

Almost every business person wanted to get a piece of pie from this big market. Some were CPU fan cooler manufacturers and the others power suppliers. Of course, the competition includes LED packaging firms and the traditional lighting devices suppliers. Additionally, medium- and small-businesses in Taiwan also wanted to somehow participate in this arena in order to find new business opportunity to upgrade themselves.

Before national standards of each country have been established, all participants in the LED industry were highly optimistic. Only recently, some countries released or are releasing their standards, which becomes a “wake-up call” for the industry – the majority of LED Street lamp manufactures will be squeezed out of the market very soon because the standards is too high for most of them, and only the very best players can survive.

Year 2010 is regarded by the industry as the first year of LED lighting. There is a clear trend that from this year onward, LED luminaires will replace the traditional lighting devices for its expected increase in efficacy and reduction in cost. In light of such development, Dr. Patrick P.C. Yao and Dr. Chiu-Fong Liao decided to devote themselves to the industry with their long-standing and invaluable experiences in related fields, and founded Applied Quantum Bright Technologies Co. Ltd. (AQBT). Dr. Yao worked for more than 20 years in Chung- Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST), after he obtained his Ph.D. degree from Cambridge University in Material Science, and Dr. Liao was the key project leader at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of London.

Dr. Patrick P.C. Yao

At first, AQBT focused on solving the most difficult problem of high power LED fixture which is the heat dissipation of the LED package. Based on the fundamental physics theory of the conduction, the radiation and the convection, and through the innovative package design, the unique heat sink construction and the application of Infrared radiation coating material, all the problem of the heat dissipation was solved successfully.
All AQBT’s products are designed with the view of building its competitiveness through automation and mass production. After the success in the heat dissipation module, AQBT devoted itself to LED packaging and patented many key technologies.

Leveraging its achievements in heat dissipation and LED packaging, AQBT subsequently developed several high-power and multi-chip applications for wide varieties of fixtures. With the goal of pushing boundaries, in less than 2 years, AQBT achieved many breakthroughs that set itself apart from competition. AQBT adopted a unique design to channel the light, heat and electric current separately. Its multi-chip LED array can achieve the efficiency of 114lm/W (at 15W) simply using Epistar’s LED chips and void free die bonding mass production technology. At 25W power consumption, the LED array also can achieve the efficiency of 100lm/W, surpassing the industry’s leading performance of 70-90lm/W (at 10 W top), this performance even surprised Epistar’s staff, and encouraged their cooperation.

AQBT LED light engine and Multi-chip LED Array

To formulate a win-win strategy and to focus on its own forte, AQBT has developed a series of modularized high-power light engine products. All the light engine products are designed basing on many of its patented technologies, such as High efficiency LED packaging, Nano painting for speeding heat dissipation, high heat convection thin fin structure, Bat wing secondary optical lens, 90% high conversion efficiency of the power driver, and easy assembly modularized mechanical design etc.

AQBT bases its strategy on cooperating rather than competing with traditional lighting businesses. This strategy significantly lowers the entry barrier for the traditional lighting manufacturers who would like to explore the LED segment.

Field test of AQBT LED Street Lamps, with its outstanding performance and relative low cost, has already been well accepted by many customers. LED street lamps with AQBT’s light engines have been installed in several states in the US, Samoa islands, Malaysia, Vietnam and many provinces in China, such as Ji-lin and Henan. AQBT’s light engine has withstood the tests of cyclical and extreme weather conditions in these places. As a result, ABQT has successfully obtained local certificates and orders. In terms of light efficiency, AQBT’s light engine has passed the tests both from SGS Taiwan and the National Electric Light Source Quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Beijing). The overall efficiency of light engine and fixture has reached 77lm/W, surpassing Taiwan’s national standard (CNS 15233) requirement of 75lm/w for top level of the LED street lamps.

AQBT’s LED streetlight modules

All AQBT’s products are certified by UL, which is a must in US. Its LED array, light engine and street lamps were all certified in June 2010 (E334190 for LED array and light engine; EE 331499 for LED streetlamps). Obtaining these 3 items UL approved at one time is a good evidence of quality and safety.

The future strategy of AQBT is to focus on its strength in developing high-power, multi-chip LED applications, even applying the latest technology in AC LED lighting devices. As for the street lamp, it will work with distributors of each place or country by licensing and building up the total turkey system locally. It will speed up the product distribution and achieve further energy saving through localized production, and also benefit the local GDP.

In order to speed up the LED luminaries development and to widen market share which comes down to two factors, the lumen per dollar and lumens/Watt that is the efficiency of the luminary. All that should be within the reach of finger tips. Although AQBT’s strengths are innovation and product design, Dr. Yao and his team also recognize that the key success factor in the future is vertical integration within the industry. In spite of its steady progress in its defined strategy, AQBT is actively seeking complementary partners to achieve greater success in the international scales.

For more information about AQBT's products, please contact service.aqbt@gmail.com