May 16, 2012 — Dow Electronic Materials, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) made a bolt-on acquisition of Lightscape Materials Inc., a spin-off of research company SRI International.
Lightscape Materials offers intellectual property (IP) in specialty phosphor technology, which Dow will add to its light-emitting diode (LED) technologies portfolio. Lightscape co-founders Gerard Frederickson and Yongchi Tian will join Dow’s LED Technologies team.
Major Lightscape Materials’ investors included Wisepower and SRI International. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Phosphors are applied to or around LED chips for improved efficiency and color quality. They are implemented in display backlights and illumination LED fixtures. Also read: Phosphor trends for LED manufacturing
"The novel phosphor compositions developed by Lightscape Materials enable improved quality, reliability and output color of LED light-based systems," said Leo Linehan, global general manager for Dow Electronic Materials’ Growth Technologies business. The phosphors will enable LEDs to create a wide spectrum of white light, with the color tuned for the desired application.
Dow formed its LED Technologies business segment in October 2011. Its portfolio includes metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) precursors for LED manufacturing, photoresists and related ancillaries for lithographic processing, metallization processes for electroplating, and pads and slurries for chemical mechanical polishing/planarization (CMP). In March, Dow opened an R&D center in Seoul, South Korea, with a focus on organic LEDs (OLEDs).
Dow (NYSE: DOW) is a wide-ranging science and technology company offering specialty chemicals, advanced materials, agrosciences and plastics for electronics, water, energy, coatings and agriculture. Dow Electronic Materials is a global supplier of materials and technologies to the electronics industry, serving the semiconductor, interconnect, finishing, photovoltaic, display, LED and optics markets. Dow Electronic Materials has manufacturing and research facilities in the US, Europe, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
More information about Dow can be found at http://www.dow.com.
Wisepower (KOSDAQ: 040670) is a diversified business in batteries, wireless charging solution and LED lighting. More information about Wisepower can be found at http://www.wisepower.co.kr.
SRI International, a nonprofit research and development organization, performs sponsored R&D for governments, businesses, and foundations.