Dow Corning, a major manufacturer in silicones, silicon-based technology and innovation and wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company, further expanded the design flexibilities for LED packaging manufacturers with the addition of five new optical encapsulants (OEs) to its fast-growing portfolio of advanced LED solutions.

Offering extra high thermal and optical stability with optimized refractive indexes, hardness and gas barrier properties, these five new products broaden design latitudes for very high power LED packages, such as ceramic substrate-based surface mount device (SMD), chip on-board (COB) and plastic leaded chip carrier (PLCC) packaging.

(Dow Corning/ LEDinside)

All introduced under the Dow Corning® label, the five new products include OE-7840, OE-7841, OE-7843, OE-7810 and OE-7820 Optical Encapsulants. They fall into two separate categories of targeted performance properties, but all deliver superior photothermal stability and reliability at sustained temperatures of 150°C.

Three of the products – Dow Corning® OE-7840, Dow Corning® OE-7841 and Dow Corning® OE-7843 Optical Encapsulants – provide OEMs optimized refractive indexes and other features to improve both efficiency and reliability of high-power PLCC LED packages.

The OE-7840 and OE-7841 products respectively offer RIs of 1.5 and 1.48 to allow designers to optimize light output while ensuring their LED packages have good gas barrier properties. OE-7843 Encapsulant rounds this category out by combining an RI of 1.5 with good anti-silver corrosion properties to enable high-power PLCC LED packages to withstand severe environmental conditions.

The two remaining new products – Dow Corning® OE-7810 and Dow Corning® OE-7820 Optical Encapsulants – target high-power COB and ceramic substrate-based SMD LED packages, where very high thermal resistance is the priority and corrosive silver is not used.

They offer a choice of durometer tailored to improve durability depending on design parameters. OE-7810 Encapsulant provides a hardness of Shore A55 for packaging applications that require higher elongation for improved durability under thermal cycling. OE-7820 Encapsulant, with a durometer of Shore A70, delivers higher hardness that can contribute to better handling and minimal dust pick up.