What is a Point Source LED?
What is a Point Source LED?
A point source is a light source whose light-emitting area is extremely small, close to a single point.
A Point Source LED is an LED whose light-emitting area has been made even smaller than that of a conventional LED, reduced to a point-like shape.
In a conventional LED, light is emitted from the entire surface of the chip.
In a Point Source LED, light is emitted from a tiny portion of the chip.
Difference from conventional LEDs
With a conventional LED, the shadow cast when an object passes across has blurred edges.
In contrast, with a Point Source LED the shadow edges become very sharp.
As a result, a clear shadow is produced even when the passing object is very small, making it possible to achieve higher resolution when applied to sensors.
When forming a beam light source using an LED and a lens, a conventional LED produces a large beam that spreads over a short distance. This beam spread can potentially be suppressed by providing sufficient distance between the LED and the lens, but this causes adverse effects such as a larger source size and reduced beam optical power.
| Point Source LED | Conventional LED |
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| Small beam size, less likely to spread | Large beam size, spreads quickly |
Advantages of the Point Source LED
Because the Star LED is a point source with an extremely small light-emitting area, it can improve the accuracy and resolution of sensors.
For application to encoders
For application to photoelectric sensors
