Keyboard backlight requires less power, fewer LEDs

Global Lighting Technologies has introduced a thinner, LED-based backlight for use with desktop or notebook PC keyboards that provides excellent brightness and uniformity, along with the opportunity to utilize fewer LEDs, reducing the cost of the backlight.

The backlight design utilizes the company’s patented MicroLens light extraction technology and optical engineering expertise to extract more light from the backlight through to the keyboard, increasing brightness while spreading the light more uniformly. It employs side-firing LEDs that focus their light into a high-performance light guide. Using optical simulations, GLT’s designers can optimize uniformity, and, in some cases, use diversion features that are molded directly into the light guide to “bend” a portion of the light around a potential thru-hole, resulting in a very uniform backlight that gets more collimated light from the light guide through to the keyboard. LEDs can be located on the edge of the light guide, or in some cases, in the middle of the backlight, depending-upon the surrounding geometry. The backlight can be thinner and provide a brighter, crisper and more uniform light, which may require fewer LEDs. This reduces the high cost, thickness, and power consumption associated with other backlighting methods such as screen-printed light guides or direct LED lighting.

Typical backlight thicknesses that can be provided for desktop keyboards are in the 0.6 to 0.8mm range. For laptop keyboards, even thinner backlights in the range of 0.3 to 0.4mm can be realized.

Global Lighting Technologies, www.glthome.com



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Global Lighting Technologies’ LED-based backlight for desktop and notebook PC keyboards provides excellent brightness and uniformity.