Category Archives: LEDs

May 31, 2012 — SouthWest NanoTechnologies (SWeNT) released SG65i, a single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) product with >95% semiconducting concentration, before secondary processing to remove metallic SWCNT content.

SG65i, building on SWeNT’s grade SG65, was developed for use in printed semiconductor devices, such as thin-film transistors (TFT) in organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, next-generation non-silicon semiconductor computing devices, and more.

SG65i is produced via the proprietary CoMoCAT process, which controls SWCNT structure, or chirality. Single-wall carbon nanotubes can be metallic or semiconducting, depending on diameter and chirality.

The >95% semiconducting content is approximately 28% more than most other SWCNTs, SWeNT reports. This high concentration avoids much slow, expensive, low-yielding secondary processing for semiconductor applications. Secondary processing to remove metallic SWCNTs can damage the remaining SWCNTs, SWeNT notes.

SG65i is available either as dry powder, aqueous or solvent based dispersions, or as printable ink.

SWeNT will continue improving processes to synthesize even more semiconductor-enriched products, with the goal of eliminating secondary processes altogether.

SouthWest NanoTechnologies (SWeNT) is an advanced materials company that manufactures high-quality single-wall and specialty multi-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT, MWCNT) products in various forms, including powders, pastes, dispersions and inks. For more information, please visit www.swentnano.com.

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May 30, 2012 – Marketwire — The Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University (ASU), in conjunction with Army Research Labs scientists, manufactured what it is reporting as the world’s largest flexible, full-color organic light emitting display (OLED) display prototype. FDC used advanced mixed-oxide thin film transistors (TFTs) to build the 7.4” device.

The U.S. Department of Defense needs thin, lightweight, bendable, and highly rugged display devices for video and other uses. This prototype represents “a realistic path forward for the production of high-performance, flexible, full-color OLED displays,” said Nick Colaneri, director of the FDC.

Mixed-oxide TFTs are lower-cost than low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) and high performance, with vibrant colors, high switching speeds for video, and reduced power consumption from conventional displays. Mixed oxide TFTs offer a better ability to drive currents and improve the lifetime and stability of transistors used for OLED displays, ASU says. Mixed-oxide TFTs can be manufactured on existing amorphous silicon (a-Si) production lines, which was a major consideration for the FDC. The display production makes use of FDC’s proprietary bond/de-bond technology.

The prototype OLED display will be on the FDC booth #643 at SID Display Week, June 5-7, 2012 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston, MA.

The FDC is a government/industry/academia partnership for advancing full-color flexible display technology and fostering development of a manufacturing ecosystem to support flexible electronic devices. More information on the FDC can be found at flexdisplay.asu.edu.

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May 30, 2012 — Phosphors used in light-emitting diode (LED) lighting applications will see a market increase from about $525 million in 2012 to more than $730 million by 2015, continuing to over $1.6 billion by 2019, said NanoMarkets in its new report, “Market Opportunities for LED Phosphors in Lighting Applications 2012.” This means a 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the 8-year forecast period.

As LED lighting is adopted globally, starting in 2012 and with the support of many national and municipal governments, LED phosphor suppliers will sell to an expanding market, especially in the general illumination sectors. To read more about how LEDs are changing the lighting industry, see Egret Consulting’s report from LightFair 2012: LEDs outshine legacy lighting business structure at LightFair 2012

Phosphors can improve luminous efficacy to make LEDs comparable with fluorescent lighting. LED phosphors increase internal quantum efficiency or reduce down-conversion loss.

For general illumination LEDs and display backlights, phosphors will be used to improve color rendering, bringing LEDs into competition with incandescent lighting.

LED lighting component makers will also use phosphors and phosphor blends to tailor color temperatures to applications.

During the forecast period, the market value for LED phosphors in display backlighting will decline. Underlying display markets will not keep up demand, as advances are enabling fewer LEDs per device.

Market Opportunities for LED Phosphors in Lighting Applications 2012 from NanoMarkets provides analysis and forecast of the LED phosphor market in the next 8 years as it relates to the fabrication of white LEDs for lighting applications, covering market strategies, products, and technical developments in the area of LED phosphors. The report also includes NanoMarkets’ assessments of the strategies of several of the leading firms active in the LED phosphors space, and granular 8-year forecasts of the inorganic LED phosphors shipments in both volume and value terms, with breakouts by type of phosphor and by phosphor deposition technology.

Key players mentioned in the report: Seoul Semiconductor, Intematix, Mitsubishi, Nichia, Toyoda Gosei, Dow, Osram, GE, Philips, and others.

NanoMarkets tracks and analyzes emerging market opportunities in solid-state lighting, energy, electronics and other markets created by developments in advanced materials. Visit www.nanomarkets.net for a full listing of NanoMarkets’ reports and other services.

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May 29, 2012 — Reporting from Barclays Capital’s BarCap 2012 Global TMT Conference, the company’s analysts say that the light emitting diode (LED) industry remains in oversupply, and 90%+ utilization rates being reported in Taiwan’s LED fabs are a short-lived event.

However, the LED industry is increasingly confident that supply and demand are becoming more balanced from the end of 2012 onward. Lighting demand growth will start in 2013, driving more equipment bookings from Q3 2012 onward. NPD Displaysearch’s latest report supports this point of view: "After a surge in 2010 and oversupply in 2011 that suppressed 2012 fab, LED makers will see a leveling out of supply and demand into better equilibrium."

For now, demand for metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) tools remains weak, Barclays reports. “While the precise timeline of an order recovery is still hard to pinpoint, both Veeco and Aixtron expressed confidence in an order recovery in 2013 at the latest,” the analysts report. Total MOCVD tool shipments will gradually recover from the 2012 trough levels of ~300 tools to a more normalized level of ~520 tools per year.

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May 28, 2012 — Cree Inc. (Nasdaq:CREE) will be looking for a replacement, as 6-year EVP of finance and CFO John Kurtzweil resigned to pursue other opportunities at Extreme Networks, a small, growing firm. During his tenure, the light-emitting diode (LED) company Cree grew from $400 million in revenues to over $1 billion, and employees have grown 250% to almost 5,000. Cree was ranked the 6th largest (tied with Philips Lumileds) LED supplier of 2011 by Strategies Unlimited.

Michael McDevitt will serve as interim CFO while the company searches for a replacement with Russell Reynolds Associates, executive search consultants. Kurtzweil will remain with Cree through June 15 to transition his responsibilities.

While Cree’s stock price has been volatile in response to Kurtzweil’s departure, analysts at Maxim Group say the important matter is not that Kurtzweil is leaving, but who will replace him. Cree was around the same size when he joined as Extreme Networks is now, and Maxim notes that his career history has been on growing small tech firms. Kurtzweil’s departure from his last 3 employees came prior to large gains in their stocks, Maxim notes. “In light of CREE’s growth and development, we believe this represents a sensible step given its strategic shift downstream,” Maxim’s analysis states.

“We remain on track with our targets,” said Chuck Swoboda, Cree chairman and CEO. A CFO more experienced with large organizations and the commercial/consumer end markets CREE now targets will be the ideal replacement CFO, Maxim said.

Interim CFO McDevitt has been in the position before, during the 2006 transition, and has held corporate controller, director of financial planning and director of sales operations roles at the company.

Cree makes lighting-class LEDs, LED lighting, and semiconductor products for power and radio frequency (RF) applications. For additional information, please refer to www.cree.com.

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May 26, 2012 — Intel Corporation (INTC) will invest more than $40 million over the next 5 years in a worldwide network of university research communities called the Intel Collaborative Research Institutes (ICRI). The ICRI program is based on Intel’s US-based Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTCs), and will bring together experts from academia and industry to help explore and invent in the next generation of technologies.

"The new Intel Collaborative Research Institute program underscores our commitment to establishing and funding collaborative university research to fuel global innovation in key areas and help address some of today’s most challenging problems," said Justin Rattner, CTO, Intel. "Forming a multidisciplinary community of Intel, faculty and graduate student researchers from around the world will lead to fundamental breakthroughs in some of the most difficult and vexing areas of computing technology."

The three ICRIs will collaborate with their own multi-university communities and other ICRIs, as well as the US-based ISTCs. Each institute will have a specialized focus, but is encouraged to incorporate the unique environments within their region, country and area of research.

The IRCIs include 2 established centers and 3 new ones:

The 2 previously established centers include Intel Visual Computing Institute (Saarland University) and the Intel-NTU Connected Context Computing Center (National Taiwan University).

The 3 new ICRIs include-

The ICRI for Sustainable Connected Cities, United Kingdom. This joint collaboration among Intel, Imperial College London and University College London aims to address challenging social, economic and environmental problems of city life with computing technology. Using London as a test bed, researchers will explore technologies to make cities more aware and adaptive by harnessing real-time user and city infrastructure data. For example, through a city urban cloud platform, the city managers could perform real-time city optimizations such as predicting the effects of extreme weather events on the city’s water and energy supplies, resulting in delivery of near-real-time information to citizens through citywide displays and mobile applications.

The ICRI for Secure Computing, Germany. At this Institute, Intel and the Technische Universität Darmstadt will explore ways to dramatically advance the trustworthiness of mobile and embedded devices and ecosystems. For example, the joint research will seek ways to develop secure, car-to-device communications for added driver safety; new approaches to secure mobile commerce, and a better understanding of privacy and its various implementations. By grounding the research in the needs of future users, the institute will then research software and hardware to enable robust, available, survivable systems for those use cases.

The ICRI for Computational Intelligence, Israel. In a joint collaboration with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the ICRI will explore ways to enable computing systems to augment human capabilities in a wide array of complex tasks. For example, by developing body sensors that continuously monitor the owner’s body, researchers could then pre-process this information and take appropriate actions. The system can continuously monitor human functions from the brain, heart, blood, eyes and more, and send this data to a remote server that will combine them with other data such as environmental weather conditions, along with historical data, and could proactively warn people about a potential headache or dizziness during driving.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Learn more at www.intel.com.

May 24, 2012 — Jackie Sturm, VP of TMG and GM of Global Sourcing and Procurement at Intel, will bring to light some of the emerging, growth markets for semiconductors, and what they mean for chipmakers and the fab suppliers in the first session of The ConFab, “The Economic Outlook for the Semiconductor Industry.”

Sturm will join Dan Hutcheson, CEO and Chairman, VLSI Research; and Jim Feldhan, president, Semico in the Session, chaired by Solid State Technology editor-in-chief Pete Singer. The ConFab takes place June 3-6 in Las Vegas and is an invite-only meeting of semiconductor executives and the supply chain.

The worldwide chip market is expected to suffer a slow year in 2012 ($323.2 billion), as global economic prospects remaining uncertain. Although spending on fab equipment is expected to drop in H1 2012, it is then expected to sharply increase in H2. What is driving the semiconductor market? Is the semiconductor market universally maturing? No, says Sturm. The aggregated, popular indicators of slow growth mask the bright stories and opportunities in emerging markets, innovative devices for consumers, and business refresh cycles. What this means for the semiconductor industry, for chipmakers as well as their materials suppliers and equipment suppliers, is opportunity.

Jackie Sturm has been at Intel since 1993, serving as VP of Finance for Technology and Manufacturing and NAND Systems Group, Intel Capital, New Business Group and Intel Communications Group. Prior to Intel, she worked for Hewlett Packard and Apple Computer.

Learn more about The ConFab at http://www.theconfab.com/index.html

More ConFab session previews:

Bridging the fabless-foundry gap

EUV lithography readiness

Packaging progress

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May 24, 2012 — Ted Konnerth of Egret Consulting Group saw light emitting diode (LED) adoption at a turning point from “coming” to “here” at LightFair 2012, with even the biggest lighting companies endorsing the technology. “LED is now the dominant force in lighting for the foreseeable future,” Egret reports. Cooper reported a 12% adoption rate for LEDs in 2011. Would the adoption rate have been significantly higher had Cooper and the other major lighting players invested more attention to the technology sooner?

LightFair was an opportunity to see how lighting is evolving, as terminology like epitaxy and metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), die (meaning the LED chip made on a wafer), chromaticity, binning, and so forth enter the lexicon, Egret reports. The integration of electronics with electrical has created a culture of innovation with new markets not previously explored in lighting, from smart offices and homes to controlling plant and animal growth, and much more.

While the big, established lighting companies may “be limited to modifying legacy construction-related equipment into LED-compatibility,” hundreds of emerging companies are creating unique products or solutions adapted to specific applications, Egret asserts. Many of these companies will become significant players in the new lighting industry; and most will develop their own unique channel solutions, bypassing the traditional pyramid of profits built into legacy companies.

With LED lighting finally entrenched, LightFair showcased the market opportunity for LED lamp manufacturers and electronics firms making LED lamp replacements. A “Big Three” in lamps is now outdated, Egret reports, with the potential for socket replacement of LED sources at over 30 billion sockets in the US. This kind of volume necessitates a lot of manufacturers, with far broader than traditional distribution channel strategies for legacy lamp sources.

Legacy lighting industry people are being absorbed into nascent LED companies, noted Egret. Industry talent downsized out of traditional manufacturers during the recent recession is now showing up in start-ups and other young LED companies. While some good people are now staffing emerging companies. Egret warns that some “marginal talent” has ended up in good companies that “don’t understand how to properly vet a candidate due to their lack of understanding the industry channel influences.”

Egret Consulting Group is a recruiting company for the electronics industry. Read more of Egret Consulting’s views from LightFair in “LightFair and other LED issues,” by Ted Konnerth, at http://www.egretconsulting.com/2012/05/23/lightfair-and-other-led-issues/.

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May 23, 2012 — EpiGaN NV opened its gallium nitride (GaN) epitaxial material production site, on the Research Campus Hasselt in Belgium. EpiGaN’s gallium nitride on silicon (GaN-on-Si) material is used in next-generation power electronics.

The site currently produces GaN layers on Si wafers up to 150mm in diameter, with 200mm wafer production in the works. Specific applications can also use silicon carbide (SiC). The company sampled first wafers to Europe, the US, and Asia in 2011. Power electronics will grow to $15 billion in sales of discrete components in 2020, says Lux Research Inc., with GaN and SiC taking a 22% market share for $3.3 billion in sales.

Flemish Minister Ingrid Lieten and Limburg, Belgium Governor Herman Reynders attended the opening. The site is part of the Eindhoven-Leuven-Aachen knowledge triangle, which offers infrastructure for cleanroom-based facilities and access to international customers.

GaN-on-Si power electronics boast higher performance than silicon-based power semiconductors, and target efficient power convertors, better power supplies for computers, motor drivers, inverters for solar energy technologies and greener transport with smaller environmental footprint. Because GaN-on-Si uses the same abundant silicon wafers as traditional semiconductors, it offers a cost scaling advantage over less-common materials. GaN-on-Si is also a future-generation material for light-emitting diode (LED) manufacturing, with several companies developing prototypes.

“Recent announcements indicate growing interest in GaN-on-silicon processing to reduce cost and higher voltage GaN processes which will improve power handling performance," said Asif Anwar, Director, Strategy Analytics Strategic Technologies Practice, in a recent report on GaN.

EpiGaN starts with 6 employees and is currently hiring more engineers and sales persons. The company was spun out of research organization IMEC to commercialize GaN-on-Si for electronics applications. This kind of strategic research development is an example of ways to address important challenges for society with innovative and state of the art technology, said Ingrid Lieten, Vice Minister-President of the Flemish Government

EpiGaN was incorporated in 2010 as a spin-off of imec. In 2011, EpiGaN added a strong consortium of investors, formed by Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Capricorn CleanTech Fund and LRM, enabling the installation of a new production facility. For more information visit www.epigan.com.

May 23, 2012 — Microelectronics standards developer JEDEC Solid State Technology Association created a series of standards, JESD51-5x, for component-level testing of high-brightness/power light-emitting diodes (LEDs). JESD51-5x targets thermal characterization of power LED components and is in compliance with the International Commission on Illumination (CIE)’s existing LED measurement recommendations.

The standards were developed with LED industry leaders in JEDEC’s JC-15 Committee. LED manufacturers and assembly/packaging/test providers will use the new standards.

Efficiency of power LEDs is in the range of 20-40%, and these devices are increasingly used as a lighting source. The design process requires accurate thermal data for LED components. LED lifetime expectancy and light output are dependent on proven thermal design. The JESD51-5x series of standards were developed to give credence to expected lifetime and light output information on LEDs.

Also read: Cree LED test suite TEMPO 24 incorporates IES LM-79

JESD51-5x offers clear recommendations for which data to include on LED data sheets, as well as test environments and procedures defined specifically for power LEDs, removing ambiguity about how thermal performance of an LED package or a metal core printed circuit board (MCPCB) assembled LED device is identified.

The new standards will be featured in a presentation at CORM’s (Council for Optical Radiation Measurements) May 31 event in Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Andras Poppe of Mentor Graphics and Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and a key author of the new standards within JC-15, will present “New JEDEC thermal testing standards for high power LEDs.” For more information visit: http://cormusa.org/CORM_2012_Program.html.

JEDEC is a leading developer of standards for the microelectronics industry. JESD51-50, 51, 52 and 53 are all available for free download via the JEDEC website: http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/jesd51-5.

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