Plant lighting has become one of the key layout directions of LED companies. And this layout has also improved the performance of related companies. Most companies benefited from plant lighting, and their revenue in the first half of last year was outstanding. However, from the third quarter of 2021, LED red light chips for plants will be in short supply due to the market demand for automotive and infrared LEDs, especially in high-end chips.

At the same time, power driver ICs are still out of stock, shipping schedules are delayed, and North America’s crackdown on illegal indoor marijuana growers has also affected the shipment performance of end products, causing some LED plant lighting manufacturers to slow down their production plans and material stocking efforts. The rapid development of horticultural lighting has cast a shadow. In the future, should we ride the wind and snow and break the ice, or stop in time and stop when we see it? In order to gain an in-depth understanding of the company's layout and strategy, LEDinside conducted in-depth communication with front-line companies on issues such as plant lighting's pain points, difficulties, and market development trends.

Traditional lighting VS plant lighting: higher requirements and higher thresholds. LED plant lighting is very different from traditional lighting, mainly in terms of usage scenarios, performance, technology, etc., which also makes LED plant lighting have a high industry threshold. Hongfucheng photoelectric plant lighting LED lamp bead products put forward higher requirements for system research and development capabilities, independent innovation capabilities, quality and cost control capabilities. Among them, the main difference between technology research and development and other lighting products lies in the design of light formula.

In terms of chips, planting 

Object lighting products mainly focus on photosynthetic photon efficacy PPE/photosynthetic photon flux PPF, while general lighting mainly focuses on LM and anti-blue light. For different uses, customers have different requirements for chip performance. LED plant lighting requires chips with higher light efficiency and higher reliability. When pursuing a luminous efficiency of 230lm/w, it is necessary to use specially optimized substrates, flip-chips, special mirrors and other technologies; when pursuing high reliability, it is necessary to propose process control and selection of key raw materials. Extremely demanding.

On the packaging side, the biggest difficulty in entering the LED plant lighting market is that to develop and produce a set of high-yield, high-quality LED plant light sources or lamps, it is necessary to solve the integration development of intelligent regulation of light environment, plant photobiology, and LED semiconductor technology The problem. The difference between plant lighting and traditional lighting is that plant lighting is more suitable for the growth characteristics of plants. It needs to be considered from the perspective of bio-optics, not only to match the needs of different plants for PPE/PPFD, but also to combine the growth of plants at different stages. To adjust the spectral formula, Nationstar Optoelectronics is also at the forefront of the market in this regard, with a professional plant growth laboratory and a spectral database for simulating plant growth.

Entering the horticultural lighting market not only requires technical reserves of light sources and modules, but also needs to understand the market and policy trends. In addition, for different regions, different plant species, different growth stages of the same plant, etc., it is necessary to establish the most suitable and efficient "light recipe" database and corresponding plan, so the stickiness between the supply side and the demand side is also higher. Plant lighting is mainly based on high-power and high-efficiency products, which requires enterprises to accumulate for a long time in LED packaging technology. At the same time, customers have high requirements for the life of LED plant lighting products, and the products need to have a quality assurance of 5-10 years.

Plant lighting products are special lighting products for plant supplementary lighting occasions. For example, according to the application object of plant lighting, it is necessary to design a spectrum that can cause a specific response of plants; according to the particularity of the spectrum, it is necessary to utilize the rich and tunable spectral properties of LEDs to realize and optimize the spectrum. From the packaging point of view, excellent packaging technology is required to achieve high optical quantum efficiency and high reliability products, and excellent optical design is also required to maximize light distribution and intensity.