Patent ID: 8835949

Claim:
A light emitting diode (LED) array with electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection, the LED array comprising: a first array terminal; a second array terminal; a plurality of two-terminal LED chips, where each two-terminal LED chip comprises an LED interposed between a P terminal and an N terminal; a plurality of three-terminal LED chips, where each three-terminal LED chip comprises an LED interposed between a first P terminal and an N terminal, and a diode interposed between a second P terminal and the N terminal; a first diode interposed between a P terminal and an N terminal; n rows of parallelly connected LED chips comprising: a first row including a plurality of two-terminal LED chips, at least one three-terminal LED chip, and the first diode, where the P terminals of the two-terminal LED chips, the first P terminal of the three-terminal LED chip, and the N terminal of the first diode are connected to the first array terminal; (n−2) sequential rows, each row including a plurality of two-terminal LED chips and at least one three-terminal LED chip, where the P terminals of the two-terminal LED chips and the first P terminal of three-terminal LED chip are connected to the N terminals of the LED chips in a preceding row, and where the N terminal of each LED chip is connected to the second P terminal of a three-terminal LED chip in the preceding row; and, an nth row including a plurality of two-terminal LED chips, where the P terminal of each two-terminal LED chip is connected to the N terminals of the LED chips in the (n−1)th row, and the N terminal of each two-terminal LED chip is connected to the second array terminal.