25th Feb 09
Its market boom for green semiconductor
products
The green is money; environment friendly semiconductor products
are no more environments maniac's terms. They are now market
terms. Why should we have different battery chargers for
each type of phone? Even for the phones by same mobile maker,
there are different chargers. Why can't somebody develop
a pluggable White LED light with built in LED driver? When
so many mobile phone chargers are eating dust in many houses
can be used to light up few LED lamps. Some creative idea
inside the charger can surely convert it into small emergency
lamp by powering it back from mobile phone battery.
There are millions of houses in India who don't have a proper
emergency light source when power fails, but most of them own a mobile
phone due its economic advantages. So why can't somebody
make a charger with 2-3 Watts capacities and fix few LED
lamps in them, which can glow, from the mains source and
also from the battery of mobile phone when power fails.
This is just a raw idea, this idea can be thought further
to come out with viable solution.
There are such opportunities for power electronics developers,
mobile phone makers and semiconductor vendors to work together
to develop and research on environmental friendly products.
Here the partnership really works better.
The streetlights is one more opportunity, poor light is
better than no-lights. Since many streets does not deserve
bright light through out the day. They can be illuminated
with LED light in the range of 20 to 40 watts. There can
be also additional circuitry embedded into these lights
to switch them on and off according to ambient light. ST
Microelectronics has done some work in this regard.
One particular solution that has been developed by ST Greater
China Competence Center is the Solar LED street light solution.
It is composed of two modules: an 85W solar charger and
a 25W LED Driver.
ST Microelectronics is also showcasing few other energy
saving products at IIC-China 2009 for areas such as green
air-conditioning, and eBike.
It's not only ST Microelectronics, there are many other
power semiconductor IC vendors who offer LED lighting and
energy saving solutions. Any interested developers can look
for NXP Semiconductor, Texas Instruments (TI), Maxim Integrated
Products, National Semiconductor, and Analog Devices, Linear
Technology, Analogic Tech, Micrel, and On Semiconductor
for LED drivers. Most of these vendors provide ready reference
designs. Tweak in little bit to have your customized product.
Please note these vendors listed above are not complete
and their order does not indicate any thing, its only to
give the reader an idea on sample of familiar companies.
In power starved regions like India, there are enormous
opportunities to develop energy efficient products.
|