LED chip gold wire and copper wire difference

Nowdays most LED display companies claim their LED lamp is gold wire or copper wire.

But what is gold wire and copper wire, and how can we distinguish this, here we do a brief clarification.

In above image, we can see that One LED lamp is mainly composed of four parts, no matter what type of LED lamp, SMD or DIP, it is briefly like that.

The AU wire is the  connection between the LED chip(such as common brands: Cree, Epistar, Opto, Sanan, Silan .etc) and the leadframe(bracket to hold the LED chip).

This wire can be different material such as gold, copper or alloy.

You may doubt that if people use real gold to do this wire,  and each day there are so many LED lamp used for LED displays, could this be a huge number of money?

Well, as we can see the wire is very thin, only 1 or 1.2mil, by our naked eyes, we can not see it.

so even so many LED lamp used each day, it is not a very big deal.

This wire is very small and thin, but it plays a big role in the LED lamp.

As we all know, the material of the conduction will affect the current and the life of the LED lamp, higher current can make the LED chip brighter and life longer.

That is why same type of lamp with different wire price can be big difference.

But the problem is since this wire affects the LED display price so much, and we can not see it, not to say distinguish it by our naked eyes, so how can we know if it is real gold wire or copper or alloy.

Some clients before misunderstood the leadframe/supporting frame as the wire and use magnet to test it, this is totally wrong.

To distinguish this, it is basically impossible by common clients, because it needs special tool and devices to do it.

but for common clients, we can have simple methods to have an estimated result.

For instance, if someone sells the price very low and claims it to be gold wire, it is 90% a lie.

Or if they claim the common configuration to be very high brightness, it is also doubtful.

One better way is to ask the LED lamp manufacturer to provide the LED lamp model No. and test report.

Big encapsulation companies such as Nationstar commonly can provide such service for free if someone claims to use their lamp and gold wire.

One thing, one price, we cannot only see the specs.