Category Archives: LED Packaging and Testing

researcher Ma Ming developes brighter, smarter, more efficient LEDsRensselaer Polytechnic Institute student Ming Ma has developed a new method to manufacture light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that are brighter, more energy efficient, and have superior technical properties than those on the market today. His patent-pending invention holds the promise of hastening the global adoption of LEDs and reducing the overall cost and environmental impact of illuminating our homes and businesses.

For this innovation, Ma, a doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been named the winner of the prestigious 2013 $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize. He is among the three 2013 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize winners announced today.

“For more than 175 years, Rensselaer has produced some of the world’s most successful engineers and scientists, explorers and scholars, innovators and entrepreneurs. Doctoral student Ming Ma, with his groundbreaking invention of GRIN LEDs, honors and continues this tradition of excellence,” said David Rosowsky, dean of the School of Engineering at Rensselaer. “Rensselaer and the School of Engineering offer a hearty congratulations to Ming for his achievement. We also applaud all of the winners, finalists, and entrants of the Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize for using their talent and passion to engineer a better world and a better tomorrow.”

Ma is the seventh recipient of the Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize. First given in 2007, the prize is awarded annually to a Rensselaer senior or graduate student who has created or improved a product or process, applied a technology in a new way, redesigned a system, or demonstrated remarkable inventiveness in other ways.

“Invention is critical to the U.S. economy. It is imperative we instill a passion for invention in today’s youth, while rewarding those who are inspiring role models,” said Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. “This year’s Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize winners and finalists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign prove that inventions and inventive ideas have the power to impact countless individuals and entire industries for the better.”

Seeking Brighter, Smarter LEDs

Conventional incandescent and fluorescent light sources are increasingly being replaced by more energy-efficient, longer-lived, and environmentally friendlier LEDs, but LEDs still suffer from challenges related to brightness, efficiency, and performance  With his project, “Graded-refractive-index (GRIN) Structures for Brighter and Smarter Light-Emitting Diodes,” Ma faced these problems head-on and tackled a fundamental, well-known technical shortcoming of LED materials.

LEDs are hampered by low light-extraction efficiency—or the percentage of produced light that actually escapes from the LED chip. Currently, most unprocessed LEDs have a light-extraction efficiency of only 25 percent, which means 75 percent of light produced gets trapped within the device itself.

One solution that has emerged is to roughen the surface of LEDs, in order to create nanoscale gaps and valleys that enable more light to escape. While surface roughening leads to brighter and more efficient light emission, the roughening process creates random features on the LED’s surface that do not allow for a complete control over other critical device properties such as surface structure and refractive index.

Freeing Trapped Light with GRIN LEDs

Ma’s solution to this problem was to create an LED with well-structured features on the surface to minimize the amount of light that gets reflected back into the device, and thus boost the amount of light emitted. He invented a process for creating LEDs with many tiny star-shaped pillars on the surface. Each pillar is made up of five nanolayers specifically engineered to help “carry” the light out of the LED material and into the surrounding air.

new brighter smart more efficient LEDMa’s patent-pending technology, called GRIN (graded-refractive-index) LEDs, has demonstrated a light-extraction efficiency of 70 percent, meaning 70 percent of light escaped and only 30 percent was left trapped inside the device—a huge improvement over the 25 percent light-extraction efficiency of most of today’s unprocessed LEDs. In addition, GRIN LEDs also have controllable emission patterns, and enable a more uniform illumination than today’s LEDs.

Overall, Ma’s innovation could lead to entirely new methods for manufacturing LEDs with increased light output, greater efficiency, and more controllable properties than both surface-roughened LEDs and the LEDs currently available in the marketplace.

               

Fab equipment spending for Front End facilities is expected to be flat in 2013, remaining around $31.7 billion, increasing to $39.3 billion in 2014 — a 24% increase. The SEMI World Fab Forecast also reveals that in 2013 increases for fab equipment spending will vary by technology node and that fab construction spending will increase an overall 6.7% with major spending in China. The report tracks equipment spending at over 180 facilities in 2013. 

More than 262 updates have been made since the last publication of the SEMI World Fab Forecast. Updates are based on announced spending plans, including major changes for TSMC, Samsung, Intel, SK Hynix, Globalfoundries, UMC, and for some Japanese facilities and LED facilities.  Despite these adjustments, the overall forecast for equipment spending for 2013 has remained about the same. Depending on macro-economic risk factors, possible scenarios project a range of -3% to +3% change rate for fab equipment spending in 2013; in other words, hovering around flat.

Though the overall outlook has improved some, fewer players in the market can afford the rising costs for research and development and upgrading facilities as the amount of money needed to upgrade facilities at the leading edge technologies is immense.  The World Fab Forecast report shows increases for fab equipment spending, varying by technology node.  Fab equipment spending for 17nm and below is expected to kick off in 2013 and increase by a factor of 2.4 to about $25 billion from 2013 to 2014.

Fab construction spending is now expected to increase 6.7% with construction spending to reach almost $6 billion. In 2014, however, construction project spending is expected to contract by about 18%. Construction spending is led by TSMC, with seven different projects for the year; followed by Intel. Fab construction spending in China will increase by a factor of four due to Samsung’s Mega fab in Xian.

Capacity is now forecasted to expand by just 2.8% for this year and to improve to 5.4% growth in 2014.  Excluding 2009, the years 2012 and 2013 show the lowest growth rate for new capacity over the past ten years.   However, pent-up demand is expected for some product types because capacity additions have been cut to minimum levels while chip demand keeps increasing. Capacity additions and equipment spending are expected to pick up in the second half of 2013. In 2014, at least 5% in new capacity will be added and fab equipment spending will increase by 2%. The World Fab Forecast gives detailed capacity information by industry segment and by individual company and fab.

Since the last fab database publication at the end November 2012 SEMI’s worldwide dedicated analysis team has made 262 updates to more than 210 facilities (including Opto/LED fabs) in the database. The latest edition of the World Fab Forecast lists 1,146 facilities (including 310 Opto/LED facilities), with 58 facilities starting production this year and in the near future.

The SEMI World Fab Forecast uses a bottom-up approach methodology, providing high-level summaries and graphs; and in-depth analyses of capital expenditures, capacities, technology and products by fab. Additionally, the database provides forecasts for the next 18 months by quarter. These tools are invaluable for understanding how the semiconductor manufacturing will look in 2013 and 2014, and learning more about capex for construction projects, fab equipping, technology levels, and products.

SEMI’s Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Subscription (WWSEMS) data tracks only new equipment for fabs and test and assembly and packaging houses.  The SEMI World Fab Forecast and its related Fab Database reports track any equipment needed to ramp fabs, upgrade technology nodes, and expand or change wafer size, including new equipment, used equipment, or in-house equipment.

Recently, as the importance of environmental protection grows, the method of saving energy of products and using eco-friendly materials is on the rise. Of these, since lighting accounts for about 20% of the overall power consumption, the efforts to replace with high-efficiency and eco-friendly products are being made actively. Accordingly, in terms of replacing conventional lightings such as low-efficiency incandescent lamps or fluorescent lamps using an environmentally hazardous substance like mercury with high-efficiency and eco-friendly products such as OLED or LED, the effect is expected to be very large.

In particular, OLED lighting is a surface style and can be manufactured in a transparent or flexible appearance, and has characteristics that realize excellent color rendering and a variety of colors. OLED lighting is drawing attention as a next-generation lighting to bring a new paradigm to the lighting industry since it can change even people’s way of living innovatively in the future through a variety of designs.

Global lighting manufacturers such as Osram or Philips have been prepared for the commercialization of OLED lighting, and began the sales of OLED lighting panels five years ago. After Osram released the world’s first OLED panel in 2008, the sales of the products with improved performance and reduced costs are increasing in recent years.

Based on such trend, IHS Displaybank is to assist in examining the status and the potential for development of the OLED lighting market by publishing a report of Lighting OLED Module Industry Analysis and Market Forecast 2012, which analyzes the general lighting OLED module industry and the market. In addition, the report also helps viewers predict the position of OLED industry in the lighting industry by including the overall light source market forecast for general lighting.

IHS Display forecasted that OLED will penetrate the lighting market gradually by its several optical excellence and the advantage of being transparent and flexible shape, despite the high selling price and limited application market formed in the initial period of the mass production. In particular, the competitiveness of OLED products is analyzed to be strengthened further in the lighting industry from year 2016-2018 when the improvement of efficiency, and the reduction of the cost ratio are significantly achieved.

Recently, considering the speed of the recent OLED lighting development, the efficiency of a 100x100mm2-sized OLED module is expected to exceed 200lm/W, and the net material costs are predicted to be reduced to less than $3.

ams AG (SIX: AMS), a designer and manufacturer of high-performance analog ICs for consumer and communications, industrial and medical and automotive applications, today introduced a new intelligent LED driver for mobile phone cameras that maximizes the brightness of the flash without causing the phone’s battery to fall below its minimum operating voltage.

The AS3649 LED driver uses an innovative “diagnostic pulse” – a burst of controlled high current lasting a few milliseconds – immediately before every flash operation. During this pulse the device measures the momentary voltage across the terminals of the phone’s battery. On the basis of this measurement, it reports a value for the highest flash drive current the battery can sustain, up to a maximum of 2.5A, without dropping below its minimum voltage and triggering the phone to reset itself during the main flash.

Drawing on analog sensing technology developed by ams, the AS3649 measures the battery voltage and current with high accuracy, enabling it to precisely calibrate the optimal LED drive current under any given conditions.

Mobile phones that use the AS3649 can therefore generate the brightest possible flash light, without the need for a bulky auxiliary power source such as a super-capacitor. Users can then benefit from higher image quality and higher resolution. When taking pictures of fast-moving objects, a brighter flash enables the use of faster shutter speeds for sharper, clearer pictures.

The introduction of the LED driver AS3649 also allows mobile phone manufacturers to markedly reduce the engineering and software development effort involved in flash LED implementation. Today, manufacturers exhaustively test the operation of each mobile phone model’s LED flash system under all possible operating conditions, and at all operating voltages. The results of these tests are encoded in a software look-up table stored on the phone. Whenever the camera calls for the flash to be operated, the phone’s processor must read from the look-up table an estimate for a safe drive current value.

The diagnostic pulse technique implemented by the AS3649 eliminates virtually all of this engineering effort, since it is able to measure the actual behavior of the battery at the time of use, instead of estimating it beforehand on the basis of sampled test results.

The AS3649 supplies up to 2.5A to a single LED or up to 1.25A each to two LEDs.  The device’s current-source architecture provides for thermal management, and an on-board NTC (temperature sensor) automatically reduces the current to the LED if it exceeds a programmable temperature threshold.

“Consumers look carefully at camera performance when choosing a mobile phone – it is a key differentiator,” said Ronald Tingl, senior marketing manager at ams. “By using the AS3649, handset manufacturers can achieve the best possible lighting for pictures taken in dark conditions, and at the same time benefit from eliminating the huge effort involved in qualifying all components stressed by high LED flash drive currents.”

Dramatically falling costs and improvements in efficiency are driving increased sales of light emitting diode (LED) lamps for street lighting. Costs have fallen as much as 50% over the past two years and are expected to continue falling. By 2015, LEDs will become the second-leading type of lamp for street lights in terms of sales, behind only high pressure sodium lamps, according to a new report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice. By 2020, the study concludes, LED lamps for street lights will generate more than $2 billion in annual revenue.

“Broader investments in smart city infrastructure by municipal governments will boost smart street lighting projects, as the two go hand in hand,” says research analyst Jesse Foote. “Smart street lighting systems can provide a backbone for other smart city applications, and conversely, a city investing in networking capabilities for smart city applications should also be looking to include better management of street lighting.”

Nearly all smart street lighting projects are still in a pilot phase at the moment, according to the report. The adoption of LED street lights and networked control systems is seriously hindered by the ownership models and tariff structures in place across the United States and in some European and Asian locations as well. If utility companies own street lighting systems and charge a fixed tariff per light to municipalities, then towns have little financial incentive to pay for upgrading their lights. However, the potential for significant energy savings, reduced emissions and improved quality of service, combined with falling LED prices, means that more and more cities will find this an attractive proposition over time.

The report, Smart Street Lighting, analyzes the global market opportunity for lamp upgrades and networked lighting controls across five categories of public outdoor lighting: highways, roads, parking lots, city parks, and sports stadiums. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of the demand drivers, obstacles, policy factors, and technology issues associated with the growing market for street lighting controls. Key industry players are profiled in depth and worldwide revenue and capacity forecasts, segmented by lamp type and region, extend through 2020.

 

The way the world is lit up could be revolutionized by a new European-wide research project being led by the University of Dundee.

The 11.8 million Euros NEWLED project aims to develop a new generation of white light-emitting LED lights, which would be much more efficient than existing light bulbs.

It is estimated that efficient white-light LEDs, if successfully developed and widely implemented, could have a massive effect on reducing global energy consumption and C02 emissions.

"Common lightbulbs have a pretty low efficiency rating and even the best current white LEDs in use only have an overall efficiency of around 25%," said Professor Edik Rafailov, NEWLED project leader based in the School of Engineering, Physics and Mathematics at Dundee. "What we are aiming to develop is a significantly more efficient white LED, which would be around 50-60% efficient. If we can do that and it becomes widely adopted, then the effects on energy consumption would be enormous. It would also produce lighting over which much more control could be exercised in brightness and tone."

NEWLED brings together academic and industrial partners and is funded through the European Union’s FP7 program.

The effort to produce highly efficient white LEDs will see the project examine every stage of the LED fabrication process, from developing new knowledge on the control of semiconductor properties on a near-atomistic level to light mixing and heat management.

By examining the entire process, NEWLED aims to ensure that the new LEDs will be well adjusted to avoid compromising the achievements of the overall process and to ensure significant system and operating cost reduction.

Production system from AIXTRONAIXTRON SE today announced that, in the third quarter of 2012, long-term customer Formosa Epitaxy Inc. (FOREPI), Taiwan, placed a new order for multiple CRIUS II-L MOCVD production systems in a 69×2-inch configuration. All systems will be used for the manufacturing of ultra-high brightness (UHB) GaN-based blue and white LEDs.

AIXTRON’s local service team has started installing and commissioning the new systems in the fourth quarter of 2012 at FOREPI’s new state-of-the-art factory in the Pin-Jen industrial zone, Taiwan. Delivery will be completed in the second quarter of 2013. In May 2012, FOREPI had already purchased several CRIUS II-XL and AIX G5 HT reactors.

“This new order reflects our on-going satisfaction with AIXTRON’s products,” comments FOREPI’s chairman Dr. Frank Chien. “AIXTRON has proven itself as an excellent partner, providing superior customer care by responding to our requests and delivering the needed solutions. With short time-to-production, and highest performance and throughput, AIXTRON’s latest MOCVD generations meet the specific challenges of larger wafers and maximum chip yields.”

All CRIUS II-L systems will be delivered with AIXTRON’s new ARGUS Topside Temperature Control (TTC) system. The new method eliminates temperature variation within each run and run-to-run, enabling unmatched production yields.

“This latest multiple tool order reflects FOREPI’s growth as a top-tier LED chip manufacturer. We are pleased to support this prized customer with our latest technology. Besides reactor size and design, we believe that successful in-situ measurement and control offer the greatest optimization potential because they provide a direct impact on yields,” said Dr. Christian Geng, general manager of AIXTRON Taiwan.

LEDs are projected to grow more than six-fold to nearly $100 billion and power conversion electronics to $15 billion over the next decade as the desire for energy efficiency drives adoption, says Lux Research. While the market opportunity is clear, the winning positions are still very much up for grabs, so making wise partnership and investment choices is critical.  

“A slew of developers are working on innovative materials and system architectures, targeting the primary challenges of cost reduction and manufacturability,” said Pallavi Madakasira, Lux Research Analyst and the lead author of the report titled, Winning the Jump Ball: Sorting Winners from Losers in LEDs and Power Electronics. “Many leading lights of the electronics industry are strong in these markets, but start-ups with novel technologies are looking to grab a share for themselves.  

Lux Research positioned the key developers of LEDs and power electronics materials, devices, and systems on the Lux Innovation Grid based on their technical Vvalue and business execution – companies that are strong on both axes reach the “dominant” quadrant. They also assessed each company’s maturity, and provided an overall Lux Take. Among their findings:

  • SiC players are dominant in power electronics. The “dominant” power electronics players wager mostly on SiC. Cree is a fully vertically integrated SiC device manufacturer, while other top leaders are experienced players from silicon power electronics like Infineon, Rohm Semiconductor and ST Microelectronics.
  • Cree, II-VI Wide Bandgap lead materials space. Cree is also “dominant” in materials, based on its development of SiC substrates. The only other company with a “dominant” rank is II-VI Wide Bandgap Group, an SiC wafer supplier with established relationships with power electronics and RF device manufacturers.
  • Six vie for dominance in LED. Cree is the leader in LEDs as well, the only firm that has successfully commercialized SiC-substrate-based LEDs at scale. Among other “dominant” firms, Nichia holds the most IP, while Samsung, Philips, and Osram Opto Semiconductors have all demonstrated GaN-on-silicon LEDs. GE Lighting does not have its own chip technology but its integration further down the value chain and its recent acquisition of fixture manufacturer Albeo make it a force to reckon with.

The report, titled Winning the Jump Ball: Sorting Winners from Losers in LEDs and Power Electronics, is part of the Lux Research Energy Electronics Intelligence service.

GT Advanced Technologies and Soitec , today announced a development agreement and a licensing agreement allowing GT to develop, manufacture and commercialize a high-volume, multi-wafer HVPE system to produce high-quality GaN epi layers on substrates used in the LED and other growth industries such as power electronics. The higher growth rates and improved material properties made possible by the HVPE system are expected to significantly reduce process costs while boosting device performance compared with the traditional MOCVD process. Initial pre-payment of the licensing fees as outlined in the agreement is already underway, but further specific terms were not disclosed.

GT will develop, manufacture and commercialize the HVPE system incorporating Soitec Phoenix Labs’ unique and proprietary HVPE technology including its novel and advanced source delivery system that is expected to lower the costs of precursors delivered to the HVPE reactor. The HVPE system will enable the production of GaN template sapphire substrates at scale. The expected target date for the commercial availability of the HVPE system is the second half of 2014.

“We have been working for more than 6 years on GaN epi processes and have created this breakthrough HVPE technology critical in producing high-quality and low cost GaN layers on sapphire substrates,” said Chantal Arena, VP and general manager of Soitec Phoenix Labs. “The development and license agreements we are announcing today with GT is the ultimate validation of this work and builds on the agreement we announced last year with Silian to integrate a HVPE-based technology on their sapphire. This allows Soitec to structure its LED lighting offer around differentiated technologies and industrial partners that includes materials and equipment. Soitec Phoenix Labs deep know-how in epitaxy technologies and GaN materials will be a key factor to enable GT to bring a revolutionary HVPE system to the market.”

“GT has a successful track record of delivering innovative equipment that has changed industries such as solar PV and LED,” said Tom Gutierrez, GT’s president and CEO. “Our decision to enter into the agreements with Soitec is the result of our extensive search for the right partner with the right technology to complement our equipment business as we diversify into new, high-value technologies that broaden our reach and bring winning solutions to the market. Soitec Phoenix Labs brings a high level of expertise and technical experience in GaN process know-how. When commercially available, we believe the new HVPE system will be a key element to further reduce LED device costs and help propel the industry to greater levels of competitiveness and growth.”

Soitec is an international manufacturing company, generating and manufacturing semiconductor materials. Soitec’s products include substrates for microelectronics and concentrator photovoltaic systems (CPV). Soitec has manufacturing plants and R&D centers in France, Singapore, Germany, and the United States.

GT Advanced Technologies Inc. is a technology company with crystal growth equipment and solutions for the global solar, LED and electronics industries.

Silicon nanocrystals have a size of a few nanometers and possess a high luminous potential. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Toronto/Canada have now succeeded in manufacturing silicon-based light-emitting diodes (SiLEDs). They are free of heavy metals and can emit light in various colors.

Liquid-processed SiLEDs: By changing the size of the silicon nanocrystals, color of the light emitted can be varied. (Photo: F. Maier-Flaig, KIT/LTI)

Silicon dominates in microelectronics and photovoltaics industry, but has been considered unsuitable for light-emitting diodes for a long time. However, this is not true for nanoscopic dimensions: Minute silicon nanocrystals can produce light. These nanocrystals consist of a few hundred to thousand atoms and have a considerable potential as highly efficient light emitters, as was demonstrated by the team of Professor Uli Lemmer and Professor Annie K. Powell from KIT as well as Professor Geoffrey A. Ozin from the University of Toronto. In a joint project, the scientists have now succeeded in manufacturing highly efficient light-emitting diodes from the silicon nanocrystals.

So far, manufacture of silicon light-emitting diodes has been limited to the red visible spectral range and the near infrared.

“Controlled manufacture of diodes emitting multicolor light, however, is an absolutely novelty,” explains Florian Maier-Flaig, scientist of the Light Technology Institute (LTI) of KIT and doctoral student of the Karlsruhe School of Optics and Photonics (KSOP). KIT scientists specifically adjust the color of the light emitted by the diodes by separating nanoparticles depending on their size.

 “Moreover, our light-emitting diodes have a surprising long-term stability that has not been reached before,” Maier-Flaig reports.

The increased service life of the components in operation is due to the use of nanoparticles of one size only. This enhances the stability of the sensitive thin-film components. Short circuits due to oversized particles are excluded.

The development made by the researchers from Karlsruhe and Toronto is also characterized by an impressing homogeneity of the luminous areas. The KIT researchers are among the few teams in the world that know how to manufacture such devices.

“With the liquid-processed silicon LEDs that may potentially be produced on large areas as well as at low costs, the nanoparticle community enters new territory, the associated potentials of which can hardly be estimated today. But presumably, textbooks about semiconductor components have to be rewritten,” says Geoffrey A. Ozin, who is presently working as a KIT distinguished research fellow at KIT’s Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN).

The SiLEDs also have the advantage that they do not contain any heavy metals. In contrast to cadmium selenide, cadmium sulfide or lead sulfide used by other groups of researchers, the silicon used by this group for the light-emitting nanoparticles is not toxic. Moreover, it is available at low costs and highly abundant on earth. Due to their many advantages, the SiLEDs will be developed further in cooperation with other partners.