Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. announced that it has developed new silicone products used for high brightness LEDs. The new SWC Series is advanced silicone reflectors designed to greatly improve the brightness performance of LEDs. The new LPS-AF Series is protective film materials that are transparent and possess high heat resistance. These new materials will be used to improve the performance of high-brightness LEDs that are used for lighting products and for backlighting units in LCD TVs.

The SWC Series is a silicone-based material that has superior heat resistance and photo-thermal stability properties. It reflects light with a high efficiency of more than 98%. Even though it is exposed for a long time under high-power short-wave-length light conditions, there is no degradation of the LED’s light intensity. Furthermore, it can easily realize mass production and has flexible processability, making it possible to freely design packaging shapes.

The LPS-AF Series is a silicone-based transparent protective film that is superior in heat resistance and photo-thermal stability. By attachment to a LED chip’s surface upon heating, it can easily encapsulate the LED. Furthermore, the film compounded with phosphors can easily and evenly change the blue light to white, which is emitted by a LED, and thus improve color uniformity.

As electronics devices contributing to lighten environmental burden of the globe, the LEDs’ market is rapidly expanding in such applications as display devices for traffic lights, backlighting for LCD TVs, automotive head lights and interior room lighting. Shin-Etsu foresees that the market size of reflector materials for LEDs will expand from the present ¥2.5 billion a year to ¥7.5 billion in 2013, and accordingly Shin-Etsu is actively promoting sample evaluations and setting up a production system at an early stage.