Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology is experiencing the same kind of rapid expansion and associated performance expectation issues as other technologies when they were new such as Compact Fluorescent Lamps. One particular claim of LED technology is its potentially very long life. The potential long life is a critical part of the economics of the technologies application and is often relied on heavily to show cost-effectiveness of an application. Because of this, it is important to have a reasonable and rational estimate of useful life that is consistent for the entire industry to support fair comparison of products. Unfortunately, the rapid development pace of the technology and the industries need to bring products to market quickly does not allow for actual testing verification of the long lives initially claimed (100,000 hours to forever) or even current claims (35,000 to 50,000). It is also important to remember that the potential useful life of an LED device (package, module, or array) is not the only determinate of life of a complete LED product and the reliability of other components such as driver must also be considered. However, the reliability and useful like of the LED device itself is a critical part of a products overall effectiveness and potential useful life and a method of estimating LED device useful life is important for the industry.
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