Amit Patel, Alpha Assembly Solutions
Solid State Lighting market requirements are moving towards: (i) reduction in material stack / footprint, and number of process steps (ii) reduction in cost of ownership, (iii) improving process flexibility (iv) and improving design flexibility. Assembly of LED packages on flexible substrates enables the above industry needs.
In order for flexible circuits to be adopted for higher end applications such as automotive and outdoor lighting, reliability is a key driver. Reliability plays a major role in the overall lifetime and performance of LED assemblies on flexible circuits. The interactions between different components in the material stack can influence the reliability.
This paper presents part 1 of a structured study to understand the contribution of solder alloys to overall LED-on-flex assembly reliability. LED performance was characterized at a range of operating currents by junction temperature, thermal resistance, total luminous flux, colorcorrelated temperature (CCT), efficacy, and wall plug efficiency.
Amit Patel is the Project Manager, Engineer for the LED Technologies division at Alpha, based in South Plainfield, NJ. In his current role, he is instrumental in planning, coordinating and executing market research, and applications research for the design and implementation of electronic assembly materials for all levels of LED manufacturing, from LED die attach to module/luminaire assembly. Amit holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from The New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is also an Alent trained Six Sigma Black Belt. He co-wrote the iNEMI Solid State Illumination Technology Working Group for the 2015 roadmap cycle So far, He has published 3 papers in the areas covering Assembly Processes, and Thermal Management for the solid state lighting industry.