It is important to keep LEDs cool to ensure they last for as long as possible, according to Charles Murray, senior technical editor at Design News, who has discovered that excessive exposure to heat can shorten their lifetime, as well as damage brightness, colour and efficiency.

He said that one of the ways in which engineers can cool the devices is to use metal-clad substrates that draw heat away from them.

Similarly, drivers have also been developed that alter the speed of the current when the junction temperature gets too high, the expert said.

Joe DeNicholas, Lighting Business Unit director for National Semiconductor, said: "There's widely published data suggesting that if you keep the junction temperature of an LED at about 100 degrees Celsius, it will last for 80,000 hours."

However, if the temperature reaches 135 degrees Celsius, the lifetime falls to 20,000 hours, he added.

Last week, Stock Displays announced that it has created a new LED light box that uses up to a third less energy than traditional fluorescent tubes.