Abstract:
A cooling scheme for an LED based back-light in a liquid crystal display (LCD) is disclosed. A circuit board (10) in the LED backlight (300) of the LCD (100) has a thermally (and (optionally) electrically) conductive material (M) arranged to completely fill at least one through-hole (H) joining its front (101) and back (102) surfaces in order to facilitate the efficient removal of heat from at least one LED (40) mounted its the front surface. The high thermal conductivity material can have a large surface area at the back side of the circuit board in order to further increase heat removal. An additional thermally conducting medium (20) in contact with the material (M) ensures efficient heat transport to a surrounding frame (30), which acts as a heat sink. The holes in the PCB may be located in regions between the LEDs or under them. They may have different sizes. Larger holes may be provided under the LEDs. The material in the holes may also be electrically conducting to allow an electric contact to the LED terminals (41) to be made. The further thermally conducting medium may be a three layer structure, the two outer layers which are electrically insulating sandwiching an electrically conductive middle layer.