OSRAM wins award for Color on Demand
For the seventh time the Siemens Business Conference has celebrated outstanding achievements with the coveted top+award. There are four categories for this award, namely Innovation, Customer Focus, Global Competitiveness and 3i, which stands for ideas, impulses and initiatives. The aims of the top+award are to pay tribute to successful business, honor outstanding employees, celebrate successful projects and ideas and publicize them throughout the company.
Free choice of colors for customers
Among the many teams from around the world OSRAM Opto Semiconductors qualified as one of the finalists with its Color-on-Demand (CoD) technology. This was a major achievement and enormous recognition, even though the top spot proved elusive. No other company in the semiconductor industry combines extensive know-how in semiconductors, converters and packaging under one roof in the same way as OSRAM. This has enabled the CoD development team to forge ahead of its competitors. Color on Demand extends the color spectrum of LEDs far beyond the standard palette and enables customized solutions to be offered for example for dashboard lighting and all interior automobile lighting. Differentiation is possible, even in the markets for mass products, by focusing on direct customers - the automobile suppliers - and also on the requirements of manufacturers and end customers. With CoD automobile manufacturers can refine their brand image by using corporate colors to achieve a high recognition effect. But the automotive market is certainly not the only one in which CoD can shine. Applications include corporate branding, architecture lighting, effect lighting and mobile communication. Even printers and other electrical and electronic equipment can be customized with individual colors.
What is the technology behind Color on Demand?
A CoD LED consists of a blue indium gallium nitride chip (InGaN) and red, yellow or green phosphors in the encapsulation material. A special mixing process ensures that the phosphors are evenly distributed in the encapsulation material and provide homogeneous light in their excited state. The blue light of the chip causes the relevant phosphors to emit light. The mixture of the blue light and the light from the evenly distributed phosphors produces the required LED color. By carefully selecting the material for the phosphor it is possible to generate customer-specific colours and fine shades that have not been available before. CoD technology is used in surface mountable components such as TOPLED and PowerTOPLED. Miniature formats such as the SmartLED are also suitable for CoD. OSRAM's semiconductor specialists have taken new active phosphor materials and special mixing processes and developed an electronic LED color box that can produce individual customer colors and lighting solutions for special brand products.
General Motors is the first manufacturer to use a special brand color for the instruments, switches and radio buttons on the Chevrolet HHR. In 2006 OSRAM received the Automotive News PACE Award (Premier Automotive Suppliers' Contributions to Excellence) for CoD technology. OSRAM has used the electronic LED color box to mix a number of customer-specific colors for Daimler Chrysler (Blue/Green), General Motors (Blue Lagoon) and Hyundai (Sky Blue).
