The Ultimate Guide to LED DRIVER ICs: Everything You Need to Know

The Ultimate Guide to LED DRIVER ICs: Everything You Need to Know

1. What is LED display driver IC?

2. What is the role of the driver IC?

3. What is the importance of LED Driver ICs for LED display screens?

4. What is the classification of driver IC?

5. What are the problems with LED display driver chips?

6. How has the evolution of Drive ICs taken place?

7. What are the performance indicators of driver ICs?

8. What is the trend of LED display driver ICs?

9. What are some reliable suppliers of LED Display Driver ICs?

10. Conclution

What is LED display driver IC?

LED display driver IC is such a key component, it is like the central nervous system of the human brain, and it is in charge of the body's physical actions and the mental thinking of the brain. The performance of the driver IC determines the effect of the led display screen, especially the use of modern large-scale activities and high-end venues, making people more stringent requirements for LED display driver IC.

What is the role of the driver IC?

Receiving display data (from the receiving card or video processor and other information sources) in accordance with the protocol, produce PWM and current time changes,  output PWM current which has relation with LED display brightness, grayscale, refresh rate,etc prameters. to light LED display. Driver ICs, logic ICs, and peripheral ICs composed of MOS switches work together to display the functions of the LED display and determine the display effect it presents.

What is the importance of LED Driver ICs for LED display screens?

1. Achieving brightness control for LEDs to meet different needs in different settings.

LED driver ICs can achieve brightness control for LEDs by controlling the drive current of the LED, adjusting the brightness according to the setting. This allows for different brightness levels in different environments, such as brighter LEDs in dimly lit indoor settings, and relatively dimmer LEDs in bright outdoor settings.

2. Achieving color control for LEDs to achieve a more vivid and vibrant visual effect.

LED driver ICs can achieve color control for LEDs by controlling the drive current for the RGB primary colors, allowing for a range of color effects. This enhances the visual experience and makes LED display screens more vibrant and engaging.

3. Providing various protection functions to ensure the stability and reliability of LED display screens.

LED driver ICs provide various protection functions, such as overcurrent protection, over-temperature protection, and over-voltage protection, ensuring the stability and reliability of LED display screens. In case of any abnormalities, the protection function will start immediately, preventing damage or failure to the LED display screen.

4. Controlling current and voltage parameters to ensure the normal operation of LED lights.

LED driver ICs can precisely control the current and voltage parameters of LED lights, ensuring their normal operation. Any instability in the current or voltage parameters can cause uneven brightness or flickering in the LED lights.

5.PWM signal duty cycle can be used to adjust the brightness of the LED, thereby reducing energy consumption.

LED driver ICs can use the duty cycle of a PWM signal to adjust the brightness of the LED, reducing energy consumption. Reducing the brightness of LED lights can help reduce energy consumption and lower operating costs.

6. Adjusting the drive current of RGB primary colors can achieve color changes to meet different needs in different settings.

LED driver ICs can adjust the drive current of RGB primary colors to achieve color changes, meeting different needs in different settings. For example, bright and vibrant colors are necessary for commercial advertisements to attract attention, while softer color effects are needed for other settings.

7. Providing multiple independent control interfaces to achieve partition control of LED lights and more flexible display effects.

LED driver ICs can provide multiple independent control interfaces to achieve partition control of LED lights. LED screens can be divided into multiple zones, each of which can be controlled independently, achieving more flexible display effects.

8.Providing digital and analog control interfaces for easy integration with other systems.

LED driver ICs can provide digital and analog control interfaces for easy integration with other systems, such as smart home systems and smart office systems.

9.Providing a wide range of input voltage to suit different application scenarios.

LED driver ICs can provide a wide range of input voltage to suit different application scenarios, ensuring that they can function normally under different voltage conditions, such as in low-voltage solar energy applications.

10.Achieving gradient, flicker and other special effects to enhance visual effects and user experience.

LED driver ICs can achieve gradient, flicker and other special effects to enhance the visual effects and user experience. This can make LED display screens more dynamic, cool and engaging, attracting audience attention and improving brand image.

What is the classification of driver IC?

led display driver chip can be divided into two kinds of general-purpose chips and special chips.

The so-called general-purpose chip, the chip itself is not designed specifically for the LED, but some logic chips with a led display part of the logic function.

The special chip refers to the driver chip designed specifically for the LED display according to the LED light emitting characteristics. LED is a current characteristic device, that is, under the premise of saturation conduction, its brightness changes with the change of the current, rather than by adjusting the voltage across it. Therefore, one of the biggest characteristics of a special chip is to provide a constant current source. The constant current source can ensure the stable driving of the LED and eliminate the flickering phenomenon of the LED, which is a prerequisite for the LED display to display a high-quality picture. Some special chips also add special features for different industry requirements such as LED error detection, current gain control, and current correction.

Because led is a current characteristics device, that is, under the premise of saturation conduction, its brightness changes with the change of the current size, not with the change of the voltage across it. Therefore, one of the biggest features of a dedicated chip is to provide a constant current source. The constant current source ensures stable LED driving and eliminates LED flicker.

What are the problems with LED display driver chips?

1: Application cost

A mainstream 16-bit steady state current LED display driver chip can only drive 16 LED devices. A LED display with a resolution of 1024 x 768 must use multiple drive chips to achieve the desired effect, which results in higher material costs. If the driving chip itself adopts a scanning method, then a mainstream driving chip can drive multiple LED devices at a time, which will reduce the application cost.

2: power consumption and heat problems

Due to the large output current, the power consumption and heat generation of LED display chips have always been the first factor that hinders the development of the driver IC. This problem will become more prominent in the future of handheld LED display drive methods that may occur. With the advancement of the price of LED electronic display screen manufacturing process and the reduction of driving current, problems will be solved gradually.

3: Currently mainstream chips are mainly divided into 3 levels. The first level is a chip with a gray-scale mechanism. This type of chip has a PWM function inside it. It can generate gray levels based on input data, and it is easier to form deep gray levels and display high-quality images. The second layer is a chip with output open-circuit detection (LOD), temperature over-temperature protection (TSD), and brightness adjustment functions. These chips are more suitable for specific occasions due to additional functions. For example, they are required for variable information boards. With LED detection error. The third level is a constant current source chip without any additional functions. This type of chip only provides a constant current source for the LED and ensures good screen display quality.

How has the evolution of Drive ICs taken place?

In the 90s of the last century, LED display applications were dominated by single and double colors, using a constant voltage driver IC. In 1997, China's first LED display dedicated drive control chip 9701 emerged. It spanned 16 shades of gray to 8192 shades of gray to achieve WYSIWYG. Subsequently, for the LED light-emitting characteristics, constant-current drive to become the preferred choice for full-color LED display driver, while the more integrated 16-channel drive replaces the 8-channel drive. In the late 1990s, Japan's Toshiba, Allegro, and Ti of the United States successively introduced 16-channel constant current LED driver chips. At the beginning of the 21st century, the driver chips of Chinese Taiwanese companies were also mass-produced and used. Today, in order to solve the problem of PCB layout of small-pitch LED display screens, some driver IC manufacturers have also introduced highly integrated 48-channel LED constant current driver chips.

What are the performance indicators of driver ICs?

Among the performance indicators of LED display screens, refresh rate and gray level and image expression are one of the most important indicators. This requires high consistency of the current between the LED display driver IC channels, high-speed communication interface rate, and constant current response speed. In the past, the three aspects of refresh rate, grayscale, and utilization rate were a kind of shifting relationship. To ensure that one or both of the indicators can be more excellent, we must appropriately sacrifice the remaining two indicators. For this reason, many LED displays are difficult to achieve the best of both worlds in practical applications, or they are insufficiently refreshed. High-speed camera equipment is prone to black lines when they are photographed, or the gray scale is not enough, and the color brightness is inconsistent. With the advancement of driver IC manufacturers' technology, there have been breakthroughs in the three high issues and these problems have been solved.

In the application of small-pitch LED display, in order to ensure the user's comfortable eyes for a long time, low-light and high-gray becomes a particularly important standard for testing the performance of the driver IC.

What is the trend of LED display driver ICs?

1. Energy-saving. There are mainly 2 aspects for energy-saving driver IC:

Converting regular voltage of 5V to 3.8V or below.

Reducing driver IC control voltage and control current after optimizing the IC algorithm.

2. Integration. As small pitch LED display types have been applied more and more widely, it needs much more for driver ICs. This makes the space on PCB very limited and the circuit design is much more difficult. Because of this, high integration with 48 channel LED display driver IC came out. This could solve the problem perfectly.

What are some reliable suppliers of LED Display Driver ICs?

As different LED display driver IC manufacturers produce different effects, quality, and prices, in that case, we will list them from their reputation, quality in the below.

Company name: Macroblock

Established Year: 1999

Tel: +886-3-579-0068*7707

Email: info@mblock.com.tw

Website: www.mblock.com.tw

Address: Floor 6-4, No.18, Pu-Ting Rd., Hsinchu 30072, Taiwan R.O.C.

Macroblock was founded in June 1999 in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Macroblock has since positioned itself as a mixed-signal driver IC design house specializing in power management and optoelectronic applications.

Certified by ISO 9001:2015 in April 2017, Macroblock delivers products with the highest quality and has gained our worldwide clients’ trust and confidence.

Chipone

Company name: Chipone Technology (Beijing) Co, Ltd

Established Year: 2008

Tel: 010-82004128

Address: Building 56, No. 2 Jingyuan North Street, Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, Beijing, China.

Website: chiponeic.com/en/

Chipone Technology (Beijing) Co, Ltd. is the world’s leading total display control solution provider.

Chipone’s product covers diversified fields in mobile display, panel display, LED panel display, and LED lighting.

The main product lines include a full-size LCD driver (LCD / AMOLED Driver), touch sensing, fingerprint recognition IC, power management IC, signal converter, timing controller (TCON), and an LED display and LED lighting driver.

MY-SEMI

Company name: MY-SEMI INC.

Established Year: 2009

Tel: 886 (3) 560-1668

Email: info@my-semi.com.tw

Address: 5F-5, No.6, Taiyuan 1st St., Zhubei City, Hsinchu County, Taiwan, 30288.

Website: www.my-semi.com.tw

MY-Semi. was founded in May 2009 in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and positions itself as a mixed-signal LED design house specializing in optoelectronic applications and power management.

MY-Semi. is committed to providing excellent LED driver ICs that assist LEDs in achieving outstanding performances.

Silan

Company name: Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics Co., Ltd

Established Year: 1997

Tel: 86-571-88210880

Address: No. 4 HuangGuShan Road, HangZhou, China.

Website: www.silan.com.cn/en

Silan, a high-tech enterprise specializing in IC chip design and the manufacturing of semiconductor microelectronics-related products, Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics Co., Ltd. (600460) is located in Hangzhou High-tech Industrial Development Zone.

Silan was founded in September 1997 and was headquartered in Hangzhou, China.

In March 2003, Silan’s stock was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and the company is the first IC chip design enterprise listed in China.

Sunmoon

Company name: Shenzhen Sunmoon Microelectronics CO LTD

Established Year: 2003

Tel: 0755-26991392

Email: sunmoon@chinaasic.com

Address: 3rd Floor, SMIC R&D Building, South Zone, Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Nanshan District, Shenzhen.

Website: www.chinaasic.com

Since its establishment, Sunmoon has focused on developing LED display drivers, LED intelligent landscape drivers, LED lighting drivers, and power management chips.

After years of development, Sunmoon has developed a dynamic, positive, and innovative R&D and management team, with core technical R&D personnel having more than 15 years of experience in the IC industry.

SUMACRO

Company name: SUMACRO Technologies CO LTD

Established Year: 2006

Tel: 86 512 66800660

Email: info@sumacro.com

Address: No.1 Peiyuan Street, Sumacro Technologies Park, SND, Suzhou, P.R.C.

Website: www.sumacro.com/index.php?l=en

SUMACRO is focused on LED display marketing, which provides innovative IC solutions with leading technology, high quality & excellent performance.

SUMACRO has more than 20 years of experience in LED driver IC solution development and is rated as the National High-tech Enterprise and the National IC design enterprise.

FM

Company name: Fu Man Microelectronics Group Co.

Established Year: 2001

Tel: 0755-83492820

Address: 18/F, West Block, Times Technology Building, Nong Yuan Road, Futian District, Shenzhen.

Website: www.superchip.cn

Power supply series, LED display series, LED lighting series, PD protocol & PD car charger series, power MOS series lithium battery protection & linear charging series, remote control & motor driver series, mobile power series, audio amplifier series, other series.

Fu Man Microelectronics Group Co., Ltd. is a national high-tech enterprise engaged in the design and development, packaging, testing, and sales of high-performance analog and digital-analog hybrid integrated circuits.18/F, West Block, Times Technology Building, Nong Yuan Road, Futian District, Shenzhen

Titan Micro

Company name: Shenzhen Titan Micro Electronics CO LTD

Established Year: 2003

Tel: +86-755-86185065

Address: 10F, Building A, Ziguang Information Port, North Zone, Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Nanshan District, Shenzhen.

Website: www.titanmec.com/index.php/en/index/index.html

Shenzhen Titan Micro Electronics Co., Ltd. was established in 2003, is headquartered in Shenzhen.

There are more than 3000 customers in the use of micro integrated circuit products, including data converter, LCD driver, radio frequency (RF) IC, power management products, and other types of sensors and signal processing products.

Conclution

As LED screen applications continue to evolve and innovate, LED driver ICs are also constantly being updated and upgraded to meet the needs of different application scenarios. Therefore, as practitioners, it is necessary to keep abreast of industry developments and learn about the latest LED driver IC technologies and products in order to choose the most suitable products and solutions in practical applications. At the same time, attention should be paid to the reliability and stability of LED driver ICs to ensure the long-term stable operation of LED lighting systems. It is hoped that this article can help our customer better understand and apply LED driver ICs and improve the efficiency and reliability of LED display screen.