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Simple LED circuit with resistor for current limiting

The current–voltage characteristic of an LED is similar to other diodes, in that the current is dependent exponentially on the voltage (see Shockley diode equation). This means that a small change in voltage can cause a large change in current. If the applied voltage exceeds the LED's forward voltage drop by a small amount, the current rating may be exceeded by a large amount, potentially damaging or destroying the LED. The typical solution is to use constant-current power supplies to keep the current below the LED's maximum current rating. Since most common power sources (batteries, mains) are constant-voltage sources, most LED fixtures must include a power converter, at least a current-limiting resistor. However, the high resistance of three-volt coin cells combined with the high differential resistance of nitride-based LEDs makes it possible to power such an LED from such a coin cell without an external resistor.

Electrical polarity

Main article: Electrical polarity of LEDs
As with all diodes, current flows easily from p-type to n-type material. However, no current flows and no light is emitted if a small voltage is applied in the reverse direction. If the reverse voltage grows large enough to exceed the breakdown voltage, a large current flows and the LED may be damaged. If the reverse current is sufficiently limited to avoid damage, the reverse-conducting LED is a useful noise diode.

Safety and health

The vast majority of devices containing LEDs are "safe under all conditions of normal use", and so are classified as "Class 1 LED product"/"LED Klasse 1". At present, only a few LEDs—extremely bright LEDs that also have a tightly focused viewing angle of 8° or less—could, in theory, cause temporary blindness, and so are classified as "Class 2".[133] The opinion of the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) of 2010,
on the health issues concerning LEDs, suggested banning public use of lamps which were in the moderate Risk Group 2, especially those with a high blue component in places frequented by children.[134] In general, laser safety regulations—and the "Class 1", "Class 2", etc. system—also apply to LEDs.

While LEDs have the advantage over fluorescent lamps that they do not contain mercury, they may contain other hazardous metals such as lead and arsenic. Regarding the toxicity of LEDs when treated as waste, a study published in 2011 stated: "According to federal standards, LEDs are not hazardous except for low-intensity red LEDs, which leached Pb [lead] at levels exceeding regulatory limits (186 mg/L; regulatory limit: 5). However, according to California regulations,
excessive levels of copper (up to 3892 mg/kg; limit: 2500), lead (up to 8103 mg/kg; limit: 1000), nickel (up to 4797 mg/kg; limit: 2000), or silver (up to 721 mg/kg; limit: 500) render all except low-intensity yellow LEDs hazardous."

Advantages

*    Efficiency: LEDs emit more lumens per watt than incandescent light bulbs. The efficiency of LED lighting fixtures is not affected by shape and size unlike fluorescent light bulbs or tubes.
*    Color: LEDs can emit light of an intended color without using any color filters as traditional lighting methods need. This is more efficient and can lower initial costs.
*    Size: LEDs can be very small (smaller than 2 mm2[138]) and are easily attached to printed circuit boards.
*    Warmup time: LEDs light up very quickly. A typical red indicator LED will achieve full brightness in under a microsecond.[139] LEDs used in communications devices can have even faster response times.
*    Cycling: LEDs are ideal for uses subject to frequent on-off cycling, unlike incandescent and fluorescent lamps that fail faster when cycled often, or high-intensity discharge lamps (HID lamps) that require a long time before restarting.
*    Dimming: LEDs can very easily be dimmed either by pulse-width modulation or lowering the forward current.[140] This pulse-width modulation is why LED lights, particularly headlights on cars, when viewed on camera or by some people, appear to be flashing or flickering. This is a type of stroboscopic effect.
*    Cool light: In contrast to most light sources, LEDs radiate very little heat in the form of IR that can cause damage to sensitive objects or fabrics. Wasted energy is dispersed as heat through the base of the LED.
*    Slow failure: LEDs mostly fail by dimming over time, rather than the abrupt failure of incandescent bulbs.
*    Lifetime: LEDs can have a relatively long useful life. One report estimates 35,000 to 50,000 hours of useful life, though time to complete failure may be longer. Fluorescent tubes typically are rated at about 10,000 to 15,000 hours, depending partly on the conditions of use, and incandescent light bulbs at 1,000 to 2,000 hours. Several DOE demonstrations have shown that reduced maintenance costs from this extended lifetime, rather than energy savings, is the primary factor in determining the payback period for an LED product.
*    Shock resistance: LEDs, being solid-state components, are difficult to damage with external shock, unlike fluorescent and incandescent bulbs, which are fragile.
*    Focus: The solid package of the LED can be designed to focus its light. Incandescent and fluorescent sources often require an external reflector to collect light and direct it in a usable manner. For larger LED packages total internal reflection (TIR) lenses are often used to the same effect. However, when large quantities of light are needed many light sources are usually deployed, which are difficult to focus or collimate towards the same target.

Disadvantages

*    Initial price: LEDs are currently slightly more expensive (price per lumen) on an initial capital cost basis, than other lighting technologies. As of March 2014, at least one manufacturer claims to have reached $1 per kilolumen.[143] The additional expense partially stems from the relatively low lumen output and the drive circuitry and power supplies needed.
*    Temperature dependence: LED performance largely depends on the ambient
temperature of the operating environment – or thermal management properties.
Overdriving an LED in high ambient temperatures may result in overheating the LED package, eventually leading to device failure. An adequate heat sink is needed to maintain long life. This is especially important in automotive, medical, and military uses where devices must operate over a wide range of temperatures, which require low failure rates. Toshiba has produced LEDs with an operating temperature range of ?40 to 100 °C, which suits the LEDs for both indoor and outdoor use in applications such as lamps, ceiling lighting, street lights, and floodlights.
*    Voltage sensitivity: LEDs must be supplied with a voltage above their threshold voltage and a current below their rating. Current and lifetime change greatly with a small change in applied voltage. They thus require a current-regulated supply (usually just a series resistor for indicator LEDs).
*    Color rendition: Most cool-white LEDs have spectra that differ significantly from a black body radiator like the sun or an incandescent light. The spike at 460 nm and dip at 500 nm can cause the color of objects to be perceived differently under cool-white LED illumination than sunlight or incandescent sources, due to metamerism, red surfaces being rendered particularly poorly by typical phosphor-based cool-white LEDs.
*    Area light source: Single LEDs do not approximate a point source of light giving a spherical light distribution, but rather a lambertian distribution. So LEDs are difficult to apply to uses needing a spherical light field; however, different fields of light can be manipulated by the application of different optics or "lenses". LEDs cannot provide divergence below a few degrees. In contrast, lasers can emit beams with divergences of 0.2 degrees or less.
*    Electrical polarity: Unlike incandescent light bulbs, which illuminate regardless of the electrical polarity, LEDs will only light with correct electrical polarity. To automatically match source polarity to LED devices, rectifiers can be used.
*    Blue hazard: There is a concern that blue LEDs and cool-white LEDs are now capable of exceeding safe limits of the so-called blue-light hazard as defined in eye safety specifications such as ANSI/IESNA RP-27.1–05: Recommended Practice for Photobiological Safety for Lamp and Lamp Systems.
*    Light pollution: Because white LEDs, especially those with high color temperature, emit much more short wavelength light than conventional outdoor light sources such as high-pressure sodium vapor lamps, the increased blue and green sensitivity of scotopic vision means that white LEDs used in outdoor lighting cause substantially more sky glow. The American Medical Association warned on the use of high blue content white LEDs in street lighting, due to their higher impact on human health and environment, compared to low blue content light sources (e.g. High Pressure Sodium, PC amber LEDs, and low CCT LEDs).
*    Efficiency droop: The efficiency of LEDs decreases as the electric current increases. Heating also increases with higher currents which compromises the lifetime of the LED. These effects put practical limits on the current through an LED in high power applications.
*    Impact on insects: LEDs are much more attractive to insects than sodium-vapor lights, so much so that there has been speculative concern about the possibility of disruption to food webs.
*    Use in winter conditions: Since they do not give off much heat in comparison to incandescent lights, LED lights used for traffic control can have snow obscuring them, leading to accidents.

Applications

LED uses fall into four major categories:
*    Visual signals where light goes more or less directly from the source to the human eye, to convey a message or meaning
*    Illumination where light is reflected from objects to give visual response of these objects
*    Measuring and interacting with processes involving no human vision
*    Narrow band light sensors where LEDs operate in a reverse-bias mode and respond to incident light, instead of emitting light

Indicators and signs

The low energy consumption, low maintenance and small size of LEDs has led to uses as status indicators and displays on a variety of equipment and installations. Large-area LED displays are used as stadium displays and as dynamic decorative displays. Thin, lightweight message displays are used at airports and railway stations, and as destination displays for trains, buses, trams, and ferries.

Red and green LED traffic signals

One-color light is well suited for traffic lights and signals, exit signs, emergency vehicle lighting, ships' navigation lights or lanterns (chromacity and luminance standards being set under the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972, Annex I and the CIE) and LED-based Christmas lights. In cold climates, LED traffic lights may remain snow-
covered. Red or yellow LEDs are used in indicator and alphanumeric displays in environments where night vision must be retained: aircraft cockpits, submarine and ship bridges, astronomy observatories, and in the field, e.g. night time animal watching and military field use.

Automotive applications for LEDs continue to grow

Because of their long life, fast switching times, and their ability to be seen in broad daylight due to their high output and focus, LEDs have been used in brake lights for cars' high-mounted brake lights, trucks, and buses, and in turn signals for some time, but many vehicles now use LEDs for their rear light clusters. The use in brakes improves safety, due to a great reduction in the time needed to light fully, or faster rise time, up to 0.5 second faster[citation needed] than an incandescent bulb. This gives drivers behind more time to react. In a dual intensity circuit (rear markers and brakes) if the LEDs are not pulsed at a fast enough frequency, they can create a phantom array, where ghost images of the LED will appear if the eyes quickly scan across the array. White LED
headlamps are starting to be used. Using LEDs has styling advantages because LEDs can form much thinner lights than incandescent lamps with parabolic reflectors.

Due to the relative cheapness of low output LEDs, they are also used in many temporary uses such as glowsticks, throwies, and the photonic textile Lumalive. Artists have also used LEDs for LED art.

Weather and all-hazards radio receivers with Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) have three LEDs: red for warnings, orange for watches, and yellow for advisories and statements whenever issued.

Lighting

With the development of high-efficiency and high-power LEDs, it has become possible to use LEDs in lighting and illumination. To encourage the shift to LED lamps and other high-efficiency lighting, the US Department of Energy has created the L Prize competition. The Philips Lighting North America LED bulb won the first competition on August 3, 2011 after successfully completing 18 months of intensive field, lab, and product testing.

LEDs are used as street lights and in other architectural lighting. The mechanical robustness and long lifetime is used in automotive lighting on cars, motorcycles, and bicycle lights. LED light emission may be efficiently controlled by using nonimaging optics principles.

LED street lights are employed on poles and in parking garages. In 2007, the Italian village of Torraca was the first place to convert its entire illumination system to LEDs.

LEDs are used in aviation lighting. Airbus has used LED lighting in its Airbus A320 Enhanced since 2007, and Boeing uses LED lighting in the 787. LEDs are also being used now in airport and heliport lighting. LED airport fixtures currently include medium-intensity runway lights, runway centerline lights, taxiway centerline and edge lights, guidance signs, and obstruction lighting.

LEDs are also used as a light source for DLP projectors, and to backlight LCD televisions (referred to as LED TVs) and laptop displays. RGB LEDs raise the color gamut by as much as 45%. Screens for TV and computer displays can be made thinner using LEDs for backlighting.

The lack of IR or heat radiation makes LEDs ideal for stage lights using banks of RGB LEDs that can easily change color and decrease heating from traditional stage lighting, as well as medical lighting where IR-radiation can be harmful. In energy conservation, the lower heat output of LEDs also means air conditioning (cooling) systems have less heat in need of disposal.

LEDs are small, durable and need little power, so they are used in handheld devices such as flashlights. LED strobe lights or camera flashes operate at a safe, low voltage, instead of the 250+ volts commonly found in xenon flashlamp-based lighting. This is especially useful in cameras on mobile phones, where space is at a premium and bulky voltage-raising circuitry is undesirable.

LEDs are used for infrared illumination in night vision uses including security cameras. A ring of LEDs around a video camera, aimed forward into a retroreflective background, allows chroma keying in video productions.

LED to be used for miners, to increase visibility inside mines

LEDs are used in mining operations, as cap lamps to provide light for miners. Research has been done to improve LEDs for mining, to reduce glare and to increase illumination, reducing risk of injury to the miners.

LEDs are now used commonly in all market areas from commercial to home use: standard lighting, AV, stage, theatrical, architectural, and public installations, and wherever artificial light is used.

LEDs are increasingly finding uses in medical and educational applications, for example as mood enhancement,[citation needed] and new technologies such as AmBX, exploiting LED versatility. NASA has even sponsored research for the use of LEDs to promote health for astronauts.

Data communication and other signalling

See also: Li-Fi
Light can be used to transmit data and analog signals. For example, lighting white LEDs can be used in systems assisting people to navigate in closed spaces while searching necessary rooms or objects.

Assistive listening devices in many theaters and similar spaces use arrays of infrared LEDs to send sound to listeners' receivers. Light-emitting diodes (as well as semiconductor lasers) are used to send data over many types of fiber optic cable, from digital audio over TOSLINK cables to the very high bandwidth fiber links that form the Internet backbone. For some time, computers were commonly equipped with IrDA interfaces, which allowed them to send and receive data to
nearby machines via infrared.

Because LEDs can cycle on and off millions of times per second, very high data bandwidth can be achieved.

Sustainable lighting

Efficient lighting is needed for sustainable architecture. In 2009, US Department of Energy testing results on LED lamps showed an average efficacy of 35 lm/W, below that of typical CFLs, and as low as 9 lm/W, worse than standard incandescent bulbs. A typical 13-watt LED lamp emitted 450 to 650 lumens, which is equivalent to a standard 40-watt incandescent bulb.However, as of 2011, there are LED bulbs available as efficient as 150 lm/W and even inexpensive low-end models typically exceed 50 lm/W, so that a 6-watt LED could achieve the same results as a standard 40-watt incandescent bulb. The latter has an expected lifespan of 1,000 hours, whereas an LED can continue to operate with reduced efficiency for more than 50,000 hours.

See the chart below for a comparison of common light types:

Energy consumption

In the US, one kilowatt-hour (3.6 MJ) of electricity currently causes an average 1.34 pounds (610 g) of CO 2 emission.[174] Assuming the average light bulb is on for 10 hours a day, a 40-watt bulb will cause 196 pounds (89 kg) of CO
2 emission per year. The 6-watt LED equivalent will only cause 30 pounds (14 kg) of CO 2 over the same time span. A building’s carbon footprint from lighting can therefore be reduced by 85% by exchanging all incandescent bulbs for new LEDs if a building previously used only incandescent bulbs.

In practice, most buildings that use a lot of lighting use fluorescent lighting, which has 22% luminous efficiency compared with 5% for filaments, so changing to LED lighting would still give a 34% reduction in electrical power use and carbon emissions.

The reduction in carbon emissions depends on the source of electricity. Nuclear power in the United States produced 19.2% of electricity in 2011, so reducing electricity consumption in the U.S. reduces carbon emissions more than in France (75% nuclear electricity) or Norway (almost entirely hydroelectric).

Replacing lights that spend the most time lit results in the most savings, so LED lights in infrequently used locations bring a smaller return on investment.
Light sources for machine vision systems

Machine vision systems often require bright and homogeneous illumination, so features of interest are easier to process. LEDs are often used for this purpose, and this is likely to remain one of their major uses until the price drops low enough to make signaling and illumination uses more widespread. Barcode scanners are the most common example of machine vision, and many low cost products use red LEDs instead of lasers. Optical computer mice are an example of LEDs in machine vision, as it is used to provide an even light source on the surface for the miniature camera within the mouse. LEDs constitute a nearly ideal light source for machine vision systems for several reasons:
*    The size of the illuminated field is usually comparatively small and machine vision systems are often quite expensive, so the cost of the light source is usually a minor concern. However, it might not be easy to replace a broken light source placed within complex machinery, and here the long service life of LEDs is a benefit.
*    LED elements tend to be small and can be placed with high density over flat or even-shaped substrates (PCBs etc.) so that bright and homogeneous sources that direct light from tightly controlled directions on inspected parts can be designed. This can often be obtained with small, low-cost lenses and diffusers, helping to achieve high light densities with control over lighting levels and homogeneity. LED sources can be shaped in several configurations (spot lights for reflective illumination; ring lights for coaxial illumination; back lights for contour illumination; linear assemblies; flat, large format panels; dome sources for diffused, omnidirectional illumination).
*    LEDs can be easily strobed (in the microsecond range and below) and synchronized with imaging. High-power LEDs are available allowing well-lit images even with very short light pulses. This is often used to obtain crisp and sharp "still" images of quickly moving parts.
*    LEDs come in several different colors and wavelengths, allowing easy use of the best color for each need, where different color may provide better visibility of features of interest. Having a precisely known spectrum allows tightly matched filters to be used to separate informative bandwidth or to reduce disturbing effects of ambient light. LEDs usually operate at comparatively low working temperatures, simplifying heat management and dissipation. This allows using plastic lenses, filters, and diffusers.

Waterproof units can also easily be designed, allowing use in harsh or wet environments (food, beverage, oil industries).