Lighting

Recent trends in lighting include greater use of Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps in lighting applications of various types, most notably the greater availability of more higher energy white LEDs and the growing installation of High Intensity Discharge (HID) light in automotive applications. Automotive lighting has also seen widespread adoption of halogen lamps, which are brighter and run hotter than traditional incandescent bulbs. For these higher temperature automotive lighting systems, Ticona offers high performance, high temperature resins.

Lamp sockets for halogen lights are no longer produced in ceramics. For some years now, Fortron® polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) has been the material of choice for lamp manufacturers because of the high heat resistance, good flowability and low outgassing it provides. For the next generation of Xenon HID lights, Vectra® liquid crystal polymer (LCP) provides the required outgassing and heat resistance properties.

For the integration of electrical and mechanical components in LED lamps, molded interconnect device (MID) technology can be used to make very small LEDs. The selectively platable Vectra LCP grade E820iPD, together with nonplatable grades, enables designers to make tiny new LEDs.