Bayer MaterialScience at the Light + Building show in Frankfurt

Global climate change and ever scarcer resources necessitate significant improvements in lighting systems’ energy efficiency. One important solution is LED lighting technology – with good reason: compared with the traditional incandescent bulb, LEDs reduce energy consumption by up to 90% and have a far longer service life.

Bayer MaterialScience recognized this trend at an early stage and developed special polycarbonate and polyurethane materials for LED lamps. These are widely used in lens systems, optical guides, reflectors, light diffusers, cooling elements and housing parts. In such optical components, Bayer plastics are able to guide, bundle, diffuse and reflect the LED light. There are also a number of special process technologies to help customers manufacture the optical components.

Armed with this comprehensive product package, the company is now set to participate for the first time in the world’s largest exhibition for light and building technology, “Light + Building,” which takes place in Frankfurt, Germany, from March 30 to April 4. On its stand (E41) in Hall 4.0, the company will present a variety of products for lowering the energy consumption of lights and offering consumers greater comfort and safety.

Modern LED lighting technology also offers a great deal of design scope in the illumination of buildings, streets and vehicles. There are virtually no limits to its use in advertising, stand construction at trade fairs, displays and billboards. The technology is also suitable for modern lighting control systems. It is therefore not surprising that demand for materials for LED-specific requirements is constantly rising.

“Our materials are also opening up new applications for LED lamps and are contributing to the increasing popularity of this efficient lighting technology,” said Axel Wetzchewald of the LED Program at Bayer MaterialScience.

One example is the Makrolon LED product family, which has been developed specifically for such applications. The polycarbonate materials are highly transparent and conduct white LED light without significant losses. They offer plenty of freedom in part design, are lightweight and can be economically manufactured by injection molding if the batch sizes are large enough. Other benefits include the material’s high impact strength and fracture resistance.

Polycarbonate sheets and films are used to guide, diffuse and reflect LED light in large-area lighting systems. Bayer MaterialScience GmbH’s range of PC products manufactured in Darmstadt, Germany, include diffuser sheets of Makrolon DX and Lumen XT with differing opacity and good light permeability. Reflector sheets made of Makrolon RX, on the other hand, do just the opposite: the white opaque products reflect up to 97% of the LED light and can be used either as reflecting surfaces or as housing elements.

The possibilities offered by the LED lighting technology can be significantly extended if the sensitive light-emitting diodes are reliably and permanently protected against moisture, the weather and cleaning agents. This also opens up application opportunities for LED strip lighting in bathrooms, saunas, swimming pools, building facades and gardens. Such applications call for a transparent, water-repellent material that completely embeds the LEDs.

For this purpose, Bayer MaterialScience has further developed certain grades of its Desmodur and Desmophen polyurethane coating materials to make them suitable for the production of transparent encapsulating materials. With these solvent-free materials, strip lighting and other LED lighting elements can be sealed permanently to make them waterproof without any compromises on brightness.