Category Archives: LED Manufacturing

Cambridge Nanotherm today announced that Ewald Braith has joined the board as a Non-Exec Director. Cambridge Nanotherm has already started to make significant inroads into the LED market with its innovative nano-ceramic thermal management solutions for LEDs and other electronics. Ewald has now been brought on board to lend his considerable expertise to aiding the company in its growth plans.

“We’re really excited to have Ewald on board,” commented Ralph Weir, CEO. “Ewald combines high-level strategic nous with a deep knowledge of electronic design. He’s a big-hitter in terms of his achievements in the power electronics and telco markets, and exposure to semiconductor technologies and vertical markets. Additionally, throughout his career, Ewald has led aggressive expansion into overseas markets. This is a world-class hire, and clearly indicates the level at which Cambridge Nanotherm is now operating.”

“Cambridge Nanotherm is a company with a passion for ‘growth’ and ‘innovation’,” added Braith. “I am joining the team at a very exciting point, both in terms of the company’s growth and the growth of the large scale industry and market opportunities. The markets for LED technologies are growing rapidly, and manufacturers are eager for effective ways to improve the competitiveness of their products. With its thermal management solutions Cambridge Nanotherm can and should be at the core of this opportunity. I look forward to working with the team to continue to build on the momentum already achieved, as well as helping to drive greater penetration of key high growth markets such as the US and Asia.”

Ewald has worked in a variety of high-profile companies over the last thirty years, with a focus on the telecoms and power semiconductor markets. These include Zytec, Artesyn Technologies and Emerson Network Power, as well as establishing his own consulting firm. Ewald has most recently been CEO at Detego, a RFID software solutions and services provider for the fashion industry, and he is also a member of the board at Salcomp PLC.

Fairchild, a global supplier of high-performance power semiconductor solutions, today announced the FL7734 Phase-Cut Dimmable Single- Stage LED Driver, a highly integrated LED controller solution for low-cost, and highly reliable LED lighting solutions from 5 W to 30 W. The FL7734 enables designers to quickly achieve great light quality designs with high dimmer compatibility while integrating full power factor correction (PFC) circuitry to meet power factor (PF) and total harmonic distortion (THD) requirements.

The FL7734 solution uses Fairchild’s unique active dimmer driving technology to eliminate visible flicker or shimmer symptoms and deliver over 90 percent dimmer compatibility with a variety of leading edge, trailing edge and digital dimmers from a wide range of manufacturers. The solution fully meets NEMA SSL 7A-2013 & ENERGY STAR standards and provides a programmable dimming curve and input current management flexibility.

“The FL7734 driver simplifies LED light designs with broad dimmer compatibility,” said James Lee, technical marketing manager at Fairchild. “LED bulb and phase-cut dimmer suppliers are different, so a good phase-cut dimmable bulb has to operate well with many different dimmers. We developed the FL7734 with this in mind.”

The FL7734 is a Flyback (or Buck-Boost) Pulse-Width Modulator (PWM) controller that uses an advanced Primary-Side Regulation (PSR) technique, which minimizes the external components required for implementation and therefore lowers BOM. To meet stringent LED brightness control requirements, the FL7734 uses Fairchild’s innovative TRUECURRENT PSR technology for tight constant current (CC) variation with a tolerance of less than ±1 percent in the wide line voltage range.

Like the FL7733A announced last November at Electronica, the FL7734 can be used in a wide variety of lamps including GU10, candel lights, A19 and PAR30/38 bulbs, down and flat lights, and indoor and outdoor lights. Both solutions deliver a highly precise CC control with better than 1% variation over the entire universal line input operating range.

To meet safety regulations and ensure long-term reliability, the FL7734 device adds comprehensive protection features including dual overvoltage protection for both open-VS and open-VDD conditions, output diode short, and open/short protection for current sense resistor and every pin of the control IC. It also features open-LED, short-LED and over-temperature shutdown protections.

The FL7734 is available in 16-pin Small-Outline Package (SOP).

University of Toronto engineers study first single crystal perovskites for new applications Engineers have shone new light on an emerging family of solar-absorbing materials that could clear the way for cheaper and more efficient solar panels and LEDs.

The materials, called perovskites, are particularly good at absorbing visible light, but had never been thoroughly studied in their purest form: as perfect single crystals.

Using a new technique, researchers grew large, pure perovskite crystals and studied how electrons move through the material as light is converted to electricity.

Led by Professor Ted Sargent of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and Professor Osman Bakr of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the team used a combination of laser-based techniques to measure selected properties of the perovskite crystals. By tracking down the rapid motion of electrons in the material, they have been able to determine the diffusion length–how far electrons can travel without getting trapped by imperfections in the material–as well as mobility–how fast the electrons can move through the material. Their work was published this week in the journal Science.

“Our work identifies the bar for the ultimate solar energy-harvesting potential of perovskites,” says Riccardo Comin, a post-doctoral fellow with the Sargent Group. “With these materials it’s been a race to try to get record efficiencies, and our results indicate that progress is slated to continue without slowing down..”

In recent years, perovskite efficiency has soared to certified efficiencies of just over 20 per cent, beginning to approach the present-day performance of commercial-grade silicon-based solar panels mounted in Spanish deserts and on Californian roofs.

“In their efficiency, perovskites are closely approaching conventional materials that have already been commercialized,” says Valerio Adinolfi, a PhD candidate in the Sargent Group and co-first author on the paper. “They have the potential to offer further progress on reducing the cost of solar electricity in light of their convenient manufacturability from a liquid chemical precursor.”

The study has obvious implications for green energy, but may also enable innovations in lighting. Think of a solar panel made of perovskite crystals as a fancy slab of glass: light hits the crystal surface and gets absorbed, exciting electrons in the material. Those electrons travel easily through the crystal to electrical contacts on its underside, where they are collected in the form of electric current. Now imagine the sequence in reverse–power the slab with electricity, inject electrons, and release energy as light. A more efficient electricity-to-light conversion means perovskites could open new frontiers for energy-efficient LEDs.

Parallel work in the Sargent Group focuses on improving nano-engineered solar-absorbing particles called colloidal quantum dots. “Perovskites are great visible-light harvesters, and quantum dots are great for infrared,” says Professor Sargent. “The materials are highly complementary in solar energy harvesting in view of the sun’s broad visible and infrared power spectrum.”

“In future, we will explore the opportunities for stacking together complementary absorbent materials,” says Dr. Comin. “There are very promising prospects for combining perovskite work and quantum dot work for further boosting the efficiency.”

The recent restructuring by major global lighting companies will allow LED makers to raise capital for investments in 2015. According to “Top Lighting and LEDs Trends for 2015,” a new white paper issued by the IHS, last year’s restructuring could lead to improved margins for leading companies, along with the potential for lower product prices for consumers.

“For the big three lighting suppliers, the road was bumpy: all of them recorded falling revenue in the first three quarters of 2014,” said William Rhodes, research manager of lighting and LEDs at IHS Technology. “Industry watchers are now looking to see if these giants of the lighting industry can turn the tide in 2015.”

Following are 10 predictions for the lighting and LED industry for 2015, from the IHS technology research team:

1. China—the LED dragon—will continue to grow. The coming year could be pivotal for the global LED industry, given the growing market share of Chinese LED companies throughout the value chain. “In order to compete with international companies and maintain their growth, Chinese vendors must overcome negative perceptions of product quality that continue to plague them, even while they maintain their low pricing,” Rhodes said.

2. The sky is the limit for cloud-based smart lighting. The market for cloud-based smart lighting is unlikely to gain market share in 2015, because public knowledge of companies offering solutions remains limited; however, increased marketing of cloud-based smart lighting could gain mindshare in 2015, positioning the market for future growth.

3. Changing fortunes for lighting companies expected in 2015. The reorganization of the top three lighting manufacturers could turn them into pure-play lighting companies focused on dynamic markets, which would offer greater growth potential. The restructuring will also allow LED makers to raise capital for further investment, and will also let them reduce the hierarchal burden associated with being part of a large conglomerate. “Changes in the corporate structure, could lead to improved margins for the companies, and possibly lower-priced products for consumers,” Rhodes said.

4. Li-Fi, a brighter way to communicate. Visual light communication (LI-Fi) is a new and emerging technology, but implementations of pilot projects, along with greater media interest, is forecast for 2015. “It will be interesting to see how many commercial projects are announced this year, and on what scale,” Rhodes said.

5. Is lighting poised for a quantum leap? As quantum-dot LEDs (QD-LEDs) still have some challenges to overcome, the market will not likely to see vast quantities of commercially available products by 2015 or 2016; however, in the medium to longer term, QD-LEDs could kill off the OLED display market and cause deep disruption to the lighting industry as a whole.”QD-LEDs still have some challenges to overcome, but we might see a very small amount of commercially available products by the end of 2015,” Rhodes said.

6. OLED luminaires, and where to purchase them. Mass-market adoption of OLED lighting is not projected to occur in 2015, but retailers will likely start to offer a premium range of OLED luminaires, which undoubtedly will help create more interest in the overall OLED market in the coming year.

7. LED filament bulbs: incandescent beauty with an LED twist. LED filament lamps, which combine the benefits of LED lamps with the familiar design of incandescent bulbs beloved by traditionalists, are now starting to match other LED offerings, in terms of efficiency, price and color-rendering capabilities. “Ultimately it will be up to consumers to decide if filament bulbs will have their time in the limelight in 2015,” Rhodes said.

8. Packaged LED industry is moving downstream and getting smarter. Smart lighting is another way for companies to attempt to add value and improve profit margins. As the LED lighting market moves downstream with modules and light engines, incorporating smart lighting sensors and controls will be a key trend in 2015.

9. Is your streetlight all that it seems? In the coming year, a couple of smart street lighting pilot projects (e.g., incorporating electric vehicle charging or mobile phone masts into the luminaires) are expected to start moving to larger city-wide installations. “with developments in new technology, as well as the ever-expanding phenomenon of the Internet of Things (IoT), the role that street lights play in our world is set change completely,” Rhodes said.

10. Automotive applications driving optoelectronic components market. With LED headlamp penetration increasing, gesture control getting increasing interest, and hybrid and electric vehicles sales continuing to grow; 2015 will be a lucrative year for the optoelectronic components suppliers who focus on the automotive industry.

Organic semiconductors are prized for light emitting diodes (LEDs), field effect transistors (FETs) and photovoltaic cells. As they can be printed from solution, they provide a highly scalable, cost-effective alternative to silicon-based devices. Uneven performances, however, have been a persistent problem. Scientists have known that the performance issues originate in the domain interfaces within organic semiconductor thin films, but have not known the cause. This mystery now appears to have been solved.

Naomi Ginsberg, a faculty chemist with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California (UC) Berkeley, led a team that used a unique form of microscopy to study the domain interfaces within an especially high-performing solution-processed organic semiconductor called TIPS-pentacene. She and her team discovered a cluttered jumble of randomly oriented nanocrystallites that become kinetically trapped in the interfaces during solution casting. Like debris on a highway, these nanocrystallites impede the flow of charge-carriers.

“If the interfaces were neat and clean, they wouldn’t have such a large impact on performance, but the presence of the nanocrystallites reduces charge-carrier mobility,” Ginsberg says. “Our nanocrystallite model for the interface, which is consistent with observations, provides critical information that can be used to correlate solution-processing methods to optimal device performances.”

Ginsberg, who holds appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and its Materials Sciences Division, as well as UC Berkeley’s departments of chemistry and physics, is the corresponding author of a paper describing this research in Nature Communications. The paper is titled “Exciton dynamics reveals aggregates with intermolecular order at hidden interfaces in solution-cast organic semiconducting films.” Co-authors are Cathy Wong, Benjamin Cotts and Hao Wu.

Organic semiconductors are based on the ability of carbon to form larger molecules, such as benzene and pentacene, featuring electrical conductivity that falls somewhere between insulators and metals. Through solution-processing, organic materials can usually be fashioned into crystalline films without the expensive high-temperature annealing process required for silicon and other inorganic semiconductors. However, even though it has long been clear that the crystalline domain interfaces within semiconductor organic thin films are critical to their performance in devices, detailed information on the morphology of these interfaces has been missing until now.

“Interface domains in organic semiconductor thin films are smaller than the diffraction limit, hidden from surface probe techniques such as atomic force microscopy, and their nanoscale heterogeneity is not typically resolved using X-ray methods,” Ginsberg says. “Furthermore, the crystalline TIPS-pentacene we studied has virtually zero emission, which means it can’t be studied with photoluminescence microscopy.”

Ginsberg and her group overcame the challenges by using transient absorption (TA) microscopy, a technique in which femtosecond laser pulses excite transient energy states and detectors measure the changes in the absorption spectra. The Berkeley researchers carried out TA microscopy on an optical microscope they constructed themselves that enabled them to generate focal volumes that are a thousand times smaller than is typical for conventional TA microscopes. They also deployed multiple different light polarizations that allowed them to isolate interface signals not seen in either of the adjacent domains.

“Instrumentation, including very good detectors, the painstaking collection of data to ensure good signal-to-noise ratios, and the way we crafted the experiment and analysis were all critical to our success,” Ginsberg says. “Our spatial resolution and light polarization sensitivity were also essential to be able to unequivocally see a signature of the interface that was not swamped by the bulk, which contributes much more to the raw signal by volume.”

The methology developed by Ginsberg and her team to uncover structural motifs at hidden interfaces in organic semiconductor thin films should add a predictive factor to scalable and affordable solution-processing of these materials. This predictive capability should help minimize discontinuities and maximize charge-carrier mobility. Currently, researchers use what is essentially a trial-and-error approach, in which different solution casting conditions are tested to see how well the resulting devices perform.

“Our methodology provides an important intermediary in the feedback loop of device optimization by characterizing the microscopic details of the films that go into the devices, and by inferring how the solution casting could have created the structures at the interfaces,” Ginsberg says. “As a result, we can suggest how to alter the delicate balance of solution casting parameters to make more functional films.”

SAMCO has announced MOCVD demonstration capability on a new gallium nitride (GaN-on-Si) system, the GaN-550, from Valence Process Equipment Inc (VPE) of Branchburg NJ, USA. SAMCO sells and distributes the GaN-550, which is equipped with a ø550 mm carrier for mass production of GaN power devices.  The demo system will be available for customer demonstrations at SAMCO’s R&D facility in early 2015.

SAMCO is expanding its wide range of dry etching and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) systems for wide-bandgap semiconductor applications such as LEDs, laser diodes and RF devices. One of SAMCO’s strengths is the process of nitride semiconductors, which play important role in green electronics.

VPE is a start-up company, providing MOCVD systems for GaN-based LEDs. VPE’s GaN-500 MOCVD system employs a unique reaction chamber design and is highly-efficient at reducing gas consumption by up to 40 percent compared with other MOCVD systems.

SAMCO installed a new GaN-550 MOCVD system, which was developed from GaN-500, and has low process gases consumption, high-speed gas switching, and superior temperature control.  The specially designed gas injector requires fewer reactor cleanings, which increases system availability and uptime.  The GaN-550 system can grow more than 5 µm/hour GaN at the uniformity of less than one percent. While the carrier size of GaN-500 is ø500 mm, the carrier size of GaN-550 is ø550 mm for higher throughput, up to ø2 inch×72, ø4 inch×20, ø6 inch×7 or ø8 inch×4 per batch.

SAMCO utilizes the GaN-550 demo system and accelarates the sales of VPE’s MOCVD systems for GaN-power device manufacturing. Now, SAMCO provides “One-Stop Solution” to provide turn-key solutions for the nitride semiconductors – MOCVD, PECVD, dry etch and dry cleaning processes for power device manufacturing.

SAMCO was founded by Osamu Tsuji in 1979 as the Semiconductor And Materials COmpany (SAMCO). From its modest beginnings in a garage in Kyoto, Japan, SAMCO has grown into a $50 million corporation with more than 150 high-level design and production research associates at its corporate headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, sales offices in China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, New York and Silicon Valley, California as well as samco-ucp ltd.in Europe.

MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation, a Korea-based designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products announced today that it has started to offer 0.18um automotive qualified process technology to foundry customers focused on high reliability automotive semiconductor applications.

This 0.18um automotive process technology consists of modular processes which combine 1.8V/3.3V CMOS, 52V LDMOS/EDMOS, fully isolated 32V nLDMOS and embedded MTP/EEPROM. MagnaChip’s proprietary electrical fuse OTP is also included for precision analog trimming. Full combinations of these modular processes serve a wide range of automotive semiconductor SOC products such as, but not limited to, LED lighting, motor drivers, microcontrollers and ASICs.

This process technology is specially designed for reliable operation at high temperatures and is fully AEC compliant conforming to AEC Q100 Grade 0 specification at 150 degrees C. For example, leakage current of 1.8V rated CMOS devices at 150 degrees C is reduced to ¼ of the leakage of 1.8V CMOS of baseline technologies. Endurance of MTP and EEPROM is 100K cycle and 10K cycle at 150 degrees C, respectively. SPICE model and MTP/EEPROM operation is verified up to 175 degrees C. In addition, high density standard cell libraries, SRAM and analog IPs are qualified in this process.

Namkyu Park, Executive Vice President of MagnaChip’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Services Division stated, “This is another example of our continued effort to expand our specialty technology portfolio for the automotive market. We are very proud to play an increasing role in the fast-growing automotive semiconductor foundry market and are committed to continuing to provide differentiated technology solutions for our customers.”

Headquartered in South Korea, MagnaChip Semiconductor is a Korea-based designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, mainly for high volume consumer applications.

Scientists at UCL, in collaboration with groups at the University of Bath and the Daresbury Laboratory, have uncovered the mystery of why blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are so difficult to make, by revealing the complex properties of their main component – gallium nitride – using sophisticated computer simulations.

Blue LEDs were first commercialised two decades ago and have been instrumental in the development of new forms of energy saving lighting, earning their inventors the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. Light emitting diodes are made of two layers of semiconducting materials (insulating materials which can be made conduct electricity in special circumstances). One has mobile negative charges, or electrons, available for conduction, and the other positive charges, or holes. When a voltage is applied, an electron and a hole can meet at the junction between the two, and a photon (light particle) is emitted.

The desired properties of a semiconductor layer are achieved by growing a crystalline film of a particular material and adding small quantities of an ‘impurity’ element, which has more or fewer electrons taking part in the chemical bonding (a process known as ‘doping’). Depending on the number of electrons, these impurities donate an extra positive or negative mobile charge to the material.

The key ingredient for blue LEDs is gallium nitride, a robust material with a large energy separation, or ‘gap’, between electrons and holes – this gap is crucial in tuning the energy of the emitted photons to produce blue light. But while doping to donate mobile negative charges in the substance proved to be easy, donating positive charges failed completely. The breakthrough, which won the Nobel Prize, required doping it with surprisingly large amounts of magnesium.

“While blue LEDs have now been manufactured for over a decade,” says John Buckeridge (UCL Chemistry), lead author of the study, “there has always been a gap in our understanding of how they actually work, and this is where our study comes in. Naïvely, based on what is seen in other common semiconductors such as silicon, you would expect each magnesium atom added to the crystal to donate one hole. But in fact, to donate a single mobile hole in gallium nitride, at least a hundred atoms of magnesium have to be added. It’s technically extremely difficult to manufacture gallium nitride crystals with so much magnesium in them, not to mention that it’s been frustrating for scientists not to understand what the problem was.”

The team’s study, published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, unveils the root of the problem by examining the unusual behaviour of doped gallium nitride at the atomic level using highly sophisticated computer simulations.

“To make an accurate simulation of a defect in a semiconductor such as an impurity, we need the accuracy you get from a quantum mechanical model,” explains David Scanlon (UCL Chemistry), a co-author of the paper. “Such models have been widely applied to the study of perfect crystals, where a small group of atoms form a repeating pattern. Introducing a defect that breaks the pattern presents a conundrum, which required the UK’s largest supercomputer to solve. Indeed, calculations on very large numbers of atoms were therefore necessary but would be prohibitively expensive to treat the system on a purely quantum-mechanical level.”

The team’s solution was to apply an approach pioneered in another piece of Nobel Prize winning research: hybrid quantum and molecular modelling, the subject of 2013’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In these models, different parts of a complex chemical system are simulated with different levels of theory.

“The simulation tells us that when you add a magnesium atom, it replaces a gallium atom but does not donate the positive charge to the material, instead keeping it to itself,” says Richard Catlow (UCL Chemistry), one of the study’s co-authors. “In fact, to provide enough energy to release the charge will require heating the material beyond its melting point. Even if it were released, it would knock an atom of nitrogen out of the crystal, and get trapped anyway in the resulting vacancy. Our simulation shows that the behaviour of the semiconductor is much more complex than previously imagined, and finally explains why we need so much magnesium to make blue LEDs successfully.”

The simulations crucially fit a complete set of previously unexplained experimental results involving the behaviour of gallium nitride. Aron Walsh (Bath Chemistry) says “We are now looking forward to the investigations into heavily defective GaN, and alternative doping strategies to improve the efficiency of solid-state lighting”.

The explosive expansion of the Internet of things (IoT) is driving rapid demand growth for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices in areas including asset-tracking systems, smart grids and building automation.

Worldwide market revenue for MEMS directly used in industrial IoT equipment will rise to $120 million in 2018, up from $16 million in 2013, according to IHS Technology (NYSE: IHS). Additional MEMS also will be used to support the deployment of the IoT, such as devices employed in data centers. This indirect market for industrial IoT MEMS will increase to $214 million in 2018, up from $43 million in 2013.

The figure below presents the IHS forecast of global MEMS revenue from direct and indirect IoT uses.

Global market shipments for industrial IoT equipment are expected to expand to 7.3 billion units in 2025, up from 1.8 billion in 2013. The industrial IoT market is a diverse area, comprising equipment such as nodes, controllers and infrastructure, and used in markets ranging from building automation to commercial transport, smart cards, industrial automation, lighting and health. Such gear employs a range of MEMS device types including accelerometers, pressure sensors, timing components and microphones.

“The Internet of things is sometimes called the machine-to-machine (M2M) revolution, and one important class of machines—MEMS—will play an essential role in expansion of the boom of the industrial IoT segment in the coming years,” said Jeremie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at IHS. “MEMS sensors allow equipment to gather and digitize real-world data that then can be shared on the Internet. The IoT represents a major new growth opportunity for the MEMS market.”

More information on the topic can be found in the report entitled “Internet of Things begins to impact High-Value MEMS” from the MEMS & Sensors service of IHS.

Industrial IoT applications for MEMS

Building automation will generate the largest volumes for MEMS and other types of sensors in the industrial IoT market.

Asset tracking is the second-largest opportunity for sensors in industrial IoT. This segment will drive demand for large volumes of MEMS accelerometers and pressure sensors.

The smart grid also will require various types of MEMS, including inclinometers to monitor high-voltage power lines as well as accelerometers and flow sensors in smart meters.

Other major segments of the industrial IoT market include smart cities, smart factories, seismic monitoring, and drones and robotics.

MEMS types

Accelerometers and pressure sensors account for most of the MEMS shipments for direct industrial IoT applications in areas including building automation, agriculture and medical. MEMS timing devices in smart meters and microphones used in smart homes and smart cities will be next in terms of volume.

Indirect benefits

To support the deluge of data that IoT will generate, major investments will be required in the backbone infrastructure of the Internet, including data centers. This, in turn, will drive the indirect demand for MEMS used in such infrastructure.

Data centers will spur demand for optical MEMS, especially optical cross connects and wavelength selective switches. Big data operations also will require large quantities of integrated circuits (ICs) for memory. The testing of memory ICs makes use of MEMS wafer probe cards.

IoT Market

The demand for LED chipsets, primarily for the LED lighting market, is forecast to increase substantially through 2018. According to DisplaySearch, now part of IHS (NYSE: IHS), measured in standard units (500 x 500 micron chip size), demand for LED chipsets are expected to increase 293 percent from 35.8 million in 2013 to 1.4 billion in 2018.

“This forecast growth in the LED market is due in large part to increasing demand from the LED lighting segment,” said Steven Sher, analyst for DisplaySearch. “As average selling prices continue to fall, shipments of all LED lighting products will remain on the rise.”

In 2014 the LED market became more integrated from chip to channel, as competing companies merged and supply-chain companies acquired LED industry players. “The LED chip industry is expected to fare better than the LED package industry, as demand for lighting continues to increase through 2018,” Sher said.

While previously strong, the chipset demand from LCD TV backlights has slowed, due to a combination of sluggish growth in LED-backlit LCD TV sales, as well as improved efficiency in the number of chips used per backlight. For those reasons, growth in the global demand for chipsets used for display backlighting flattened after 2012, with a slow decrease forecast after 2014.

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