Application Note AN15 – Reflow Soldering of Bridgelux LED Arrays

The Bridgelux family of LED Array products delivers high performance, compact and cost-effective solidstate lighting solutions to serve the general lighting market. These products combine the higher efficiency, longer lifetime, and reliability benefits of LEDs with the light output of many conventional lighting sources.

The Bridgelux LED Arrays have been uniquely designed to be easily assembled into lighting fixtures. Unlike LED components, the Bridgelux LED Array is a lighting solution which can be directly mounted to a heat sink without a secondary substrate or circuit board. This results in not only a simple plug and play design but also in an industry leading low system level thermal resistance. To connect the LED Array to a driver, wires must be soldered to the solder pads on the LED Array. Soldering wires may be done manually as discussed in Application Note AN11 or with automated equipment and a solder reflow process as is outlined in this application note.

This application note describes a process for attaching wires onto Bridgelux LED Arrays using a lead free solder reflow process. Included is an overview of the soldering process, a list of required materials, fixtures, equipment, a recommended reflow oven temperature profile, and post process recommendations for solder joint inspection. It should be noted that the process described in this application note may require modifications depending on customer specific requirements. It is the responsibility of the customer to qualify the final assembly process to ensure compliance with guidelines depicted in this application note.