What IS LED Binning?
Light Emitting Diodes or LEDs are unique in many ways compared to traditional lighting technologies such as incandescent, fluorescent, or High-Intensity Discharge (HID). One example is binning which is a process where the LEDs are tested and sorted. Understanding how LED specifications differ from traditional technologies will help prevent comparing “apples to oranges”. To optimize LED and luminaire performance and longevity, it is imperative that LEDs be used according to their binning.
LEDs are manufactured millions at a time using high-speed processes. LED Corporations has its own particular “recipe”, but there are some commonalities among other manufacturers. It all starts with the epitaxial or “epi” wafer which is the baseline material that is grown. More layers are then grown on the epi wafer, the wafer is diced into chips, and these chips are packaged with electrical leads, mechanical supports, lenses, and in the case of white LEDs phosphors are added for the different CCTs or Correlated Color Temperatures (e.g. 4100K, 3000K, etc.).
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