Thermal management for high-power photonic crystal light emitting diodes

•New integrated structure for effective thermal management for PC-LEDs is proposed.•Two heat dissipation integrated models are built and demonstrated numerically.•Heat pipes model improves heat dissipation efficiency by 36.61%.•Active model improves the heat dissipation efficiency by 60.2% at 50 °C on cold end.

An effective heat dissipation structure is a crucial element for stable thermal management in ensuring thermal stability of high power photonic crystal light emitting diodes (PC-LEDs). New integrated structure for effective thermal management is put forward for high power PC-LEDs to reduce the thermal resistance between the chip and heat dissipation device, which can be composed by the heat pipes or an active heat dissipation device. Based on the thermal resistances analyzed, 3D thermal distributions for the device CSM360 with the nominal electric power of 80 W are simulated and analyzed by using of ANSYS. Compared with the general metal fins model, the heat pipes integrated model improves the heat dissipation efficiency of CSM360 by 36.61%, while the active heat dissipation device integrated model improves the heat dissipation efficiency by 60.2% at the temperature of 50 °C on the cold end of the device. The results show that the integrated structure can obtain a significant improvement in thermal management and achieve a reduction in temperature in the working status of CSM360. Heat dissipation experiments are also conducted, and the values of temperature distributions are validated to be coincident with those from simulations.