Category Archives: LEDs

April 5, 2012 — Power electronics will grow to $15 billion in sales of discrete components in 2020, says Lux Research Inc. New materials — silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) — are taking a 22% market share for $3.3 billion in sales. Expect this year to set a record for funding to power electronics companies.

These emerging technologies must be commercialized to meet specific customer needs at favorable price points, by both current market players and would-be entrants, said Pallavi Madakasira, Lux research analyst and lead report author on “Beyond Silicon: Plotting GaN and SiC’s Path within the $15 Billion Power Electronics Market.”

Consumer electronics is an immediate growth opportunity for power electronics. Fast-growing applications in renewable energy and industrial power are “likely to challenge” power device makers to come up with better form factors, at lower cost and higher efficiency, she added.

With silicon-based power electronic devices reaching theoretical limits, other semiconductors, notably SiC and GaN, promise better performance and energy savings. SiC, a more mature technology with proven reliability, will gain a 14% market share. SiC will see the highest adoption in renewables, capitalizing on adoption in solar (32% market share) and grid-storage applications. GaN will grab an 8% share, led by companies like Efficient Power Conversion and Transphorm and International Rectifier. GaN will take a 14% share in IT and electronics sectors in 2010. In transportation, both new materials will see 15-16% adoption.

Also read: LED makers could diversify with GaN power electronics production

Over the past five years, investors have funneled over $200 million into advanced materials and device makers for power electronics. On the venture side, Transphorm, EpiGaN, GaN Systems and Azzurro have closed notable rounds, while corporate investments and acquisitions such as TranSiC (Fairchild), SiCed (Infineon), SiCrystal (Rohm) and Crysband (SKC) have continued apace. This year promises to be a record-setting one for transactions with particular attention on substrate and GaN technology developers.

The report, titled “Beyond Silicon: Plotting GaN and SiC’s Path within the $15 Billion Power Electronics Market,” is part of the new Lux Research Energy Electronics Intelligence service, which covers light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and power electronics. To forecast adoption of emerging power electronics technologies, Lux Research analysts calculated the payback period for SiC and GaN devices and calculated market shares based on the required payback period for each application, as well as delaying or accelerating factors that reflect industry conservatism, design cycles, timing for capacity build-outs, and other industry drivers. Access it here: https://portal.luxresearchinc.com/reporting/research/report_excerpt/10212.

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April 5, 2012 — Interconnect materials supplier Engineered Conductive Materials LLC uncrated a low-temperature curing conductive adhesive, DB-1541-LTC, for organic light emitting diode (OLED) and organic photovoltaics (OPV) manufacturing.

The material is formulated for conductivity and stability on various substrates when cured at 100°C or higher (Cure time of 1min @ 180°C or slower at lower temperatures). Its dispensing work life exceeds 48 hours (25% increase in viscosity).

The product resists damp heat and boasts conductivity stability on tin, tin-silver and silver-plated ribbons. It cures to a rubber-like flexibility with high peel strength, withstanding stresses induced in reel-to-reel (R2R) manufacturing processes and flexible end-use applications.

Engineered Conductive Materials, LLC (ECM) is a wholly-owned company of Engineered Materials Systems, Inc. (EMS). ECM’s technology focus is electronic circuit fabrication that compliments EMS’s circuit assembly product line. Web site: www.conductives.com.

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April 4, 2012 — SABIC’s Innovative Plastics business added 3 Lexan LUX resin grades to its flagship portfolio of high-performance Lexan polycarbonate (PC) materials. The new Lexan LUX resins (Lexan LUX2110T, LUX2010T, and LUX2910T) are used in light emitting diode (LED) applications such as light guides and lenses. They are transparent and use a new formulation to improve initial color, color stability, and light transmission during heat aging.

Also read: LED test standards, packaging material challenges

These grades retain more than 98% of initial light transmission when exposed to a temperature of 130°C for more than 5,000 hours. At more typical heat exposure in the range of 90-110°C, the transmission retained is even higher.

They also provide improved light transmission (10 units better, compared to competitive products) after heat aging at low wavelengths typical of LED systems, according to the company.

Customers have a choice of flow characteristics for various LED applications, including automotive light guides and inner lenses and general lighting lenses. They also meet the UL 94 V-2 rating at 0.8mm and glow wire flammability index (GWFI) 850C at 1mm, according to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 60695-2-12.

The resins complement SABIC’s existing Lexan LUX resins: non-chlorinated, non-brominated FR resins that meet the UL 94 V-0 standard at 1.5 mm in all colors.

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) is a top petrochemical company producing polyethylene, polypropylene, advanced thermoplastics, glycols, methanol and fertilizers. Its Innovative Plastics strategic business unit supplies engineering thermoplastics including thermoplastic resins, coatings, specialty compounds, film, and sheet. Innovative Plastics is a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC). Learn more at www.sabic-ip.com.

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April 2, 2012 — Samsung Electronics launched the Galaxy Tab 7.7 in 2012, a commercial high-volume tablet based on a medium-sized active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display. AMOLED offers benefits in the weight, thickness, and battery life, but this comes at a higher material cost, says research firm Displaybank, part of IHS.

Though Galaxy Tab 7.7 uses a 7.7" screen, it supports 1280 x 800 resolution, the same as the Samsung’s 10.1" tablet. It is also the thinnest — 7.98mm — of the products released so far. The tablet’s battery capacity is 2100mAh, the highest among 7" products. And finally, it is the lightest — 335g — of products in its size group. These superlatives were achieved from adopting AMOLED for the display, but the accompanying increase in main material cost was inevitable.

Displaybank performed analyis on Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Tab 7, Apple’s iPad 1 and 2, and other tablets, comparing these to the innovation, cost competitiveness, and supply chain of major components of Galaxy Tab 7.7 (see the table at top).

Access the report, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 (GT-P6800) Structure and Cost Analysis, at http://www.displaybank.com/_eng/research/report_view.html?id=861&cate=1

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April 2, 2012 — Intel, SEMATECH, and other top chip makers, suppliers, and research organizations will send speakers to SEMICON West, July 10-12 in San Francisco. The event will single out new transistor architectures, advanced lithography, 450mm wafers, and other major developments for the microelectronics sector.

Shekhar Borkar, director of Extreme-scale Technologies at Intel Labs, will provide the technology keynote on Intel’s mid- and long-term development efforts in IC scaling, power reduction, and performance improvements. Attend at 9:00am, July 10.

SEMI plans 3 TechXPOT sessions at SEMICON West: Fully depleted transistor architectures on Tuesday, next-generation lithography on Wednesday, and the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) on Thusday.

Learn about advances — and challenges — in fully depleted devices and III-V channel materials for new transistors at 10:30am, July 10, in the South Hall TechXPOT session. Speakers:

  • Raj Jammy, VP, Materials and Emerging Technologies, SEMATECH
  • Carlos Mazuré, EVP  and CTO, Soitec
  • Kaizad Mistry, VP, director of Logic Technology Integration, Intel
  • Aaron Thean, director, Logic Program, imec

Lithography achievements, technology roadmaps and development efforts will be discussed in the July 11,10:30am, South Hall TechXPOT session. Learn about extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) readiness from transmission and conversion efficiency to mask and resist work. The session will also cover double-patterning and the role of complementary technologies, such as e-beam lithography. Speakers:

  • Yan Borodovsky, senior Intel fellow, director, Advanced Lithography, Intel
  • Stefan Wurm, director, Lithography, SEMATECH
  • Hans Meiling, director, Product Management EUV, ASML
  • Franklin Kalk, CTO, Toppan Photomasks
  • Serge Tedesco, IMAGINE (MAPPER), program manager, CEA-Leti
  • Donis Flagello, NRCA fellow, Nikon Research Corporation of America

The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) sessions will be part of the TechXPOT and Extreme Electronics platforms, July 12.

The Test Vision 2020 Conference will be held in conjunction with SEMICON West, on July 11-12.

A special session on supply chain opportunities in 450mm wafers will be held on July 12.  

Other TechXPOT sessions, yet to be announced, will address new materials, advances in 3D-IC, MEMS, test, advanced packaging, LEDs, OLEDs, and productivity solutions for 200mm and 300mm fabs.  

Register through April 12 for a free Expo Only badge. For more information, including keynotes, programs, registration, and exhibiting, please visit www.semiconwest.org.

SEMI is a global industry association serving the nano- and microelectronics manufacturing supply chains. For more information, visit www.semi.org.

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April 2, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — A light-emitting diode (LED) manufacturing joint venture is the “final due diligence” Viper Networks Inc. (Pink Sheets:VPER) will execute with its targeted acquisition: a profitable LED manufacturing company in the US.

The joint venture LED manufacturing project will commence within days.

This project also expands Viper Networks’ potential from their multiple agreements and major alliance with LEDs America, Inc., which includes broad manufacturing rights among other key agreements, including sales and marketing, global exporting, and multiple foreign country territorial exclusivity rights.

Viper Networks has been proactively pursuing well positioned, profitable LED industry acquisition candidates and engaged in merger talks with two US-based firms since early 2012. Sincce VPER is also involved in other due diligence matters with multiple acquisition candidates, it may release any expected closing date on another company prior to releasing news on this company.

For additional information, please visit www.vipernetworks.com.

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March 30, 2012 — Barclays Capital finds that light-emitting diode (LED) manufacturing and materials patents will soon run out, potentially draining value from material/chip/package suppliers and turning LEDs into commodities. These financial and market dynamics take-aways were gleaned from the Intertech Pira Phosphor Summit, a conference on phosphors being used in the LED industry.

For Barclay’s update on phosphor technologies, gleaned from the conference, read Phosphor trends for LED manufacturing

LED-related patents are buoying the top LED makers selling to lighting companies; however, core LED patents will expire in the next 4-5 years, leading to more intensified competition. Top LED makers — Cree, Nichia, OSRAM, and Lumileds — are the go-to sources for global lighting manufacturers — GE, Philips, OSRAM — thanks to strong patent protection. Barclays notes that cross-licensing arrangements between these LED makers make it difficult to gauge precisely when this patent position begins to erode.

Some Korean and Taiwanese LED makers — Epistar, Seoul Semi, Samsung, LG Innotek, and Forepi — have secured licensing agreements or partnerships with the top LED makers, gaining access to Acuity Brands, Zumtobel, Hubbell, Cooper and other top luminaire manufacturers in developed regions. But even as LED manufacturers in Korea, Taiwan, and even China ramp capacity and gradually improve their LED chip/component quality, global lighting conglomerates continue to purchase LEDs only from the top LED manufacturers.

The continual evolution in the LED structure makes it difficult to isolate which core patents remain a true barrier for new entrants (i.e. chip color, phosphor composition, chip structure, color mixing), Barclays notes. LED makers continue to develop novel ways to improve luminous efficacy (lm/W), CRI (color quality), thermal management, lifetime, and cost.

Although it is difficult to compare the various new product claims among the top LED makers (i.e. claims about theoretical luminous efficacy levels are often not apples to apples due to different specs around drive current and voltage, color temperature, LM70 lifetimes), what was clear from the various presentations and comments at the conference was that the top 4 LED makers maintain a noticeable quality leadership relative to Tier 2 and 3 players.

The majority of profits in the LED lighting sector will go to the lighting system manufacturers in the future, given an LED oversupply on the market and LED patents running out. Once core IP is no longer patent-protected, the materials, chip, and package suppliers will watch value fade from their offerings. Lighting companies can still differentiate products through design and distribution, while procuring commodity-like LED components. LED maker Cree’s push downstream "may be a prudent step," Barclays reports, given this trend.

Lighting suppliers and chip makers (Cree, Lumileds, and OSRAM made statements on recent earnings calls) confirm that IP does not make them immune to pricing pressure, with competition among the Tier 1 LED makers fighting for spots with lighting companies.

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March 30, 2012 — Semiconductor fab equipment supplier SUSS MicroTec has acquired Tamarack Scientific Co. Inc. in a share purchase of $9.34 million, plus an additional variable earn-out component which depends on the development of revenues for the next 3 financial years.

Tamarack makes ultraviolet (UV) projection lithography tools and laser micro-structuring systems for manufacturing 3D semiconductor packages, micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS), and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Laser processing tools include excimer and solid state; photolithography tools include proximity and projection.

Tamarack products are installed from R&D facilities to high-volume manufacturing plants. The company in based in the US, with an applications lab, cleanroom, and short-run manufacturing support in addition to its capital equipment offering.

The acquired intellectual property (IP) complements SUSS’s exposure technology portfolio with projection lithography. The additional core technology and product line for back-end semiconductor lithography gives SUSS a range of price/performance offerings for customers, said Frank P. Averdung, president and CEO of S

March 29, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — Kopin Corporation (Nasdaq:KOPN), advanced III-V transistor wafer producer, achieved record 1290cm2/V.s electron mobility and 240ohms/square sheet resistance results from gallium nitride (GaN)-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) materials.

The advanced GaN-based materials can improve performance of next-generation power amplifiers and power switching converters. A range of new applications require "high-frequency, high-voltage, high-power, and/or high-temperature operation," noted Dr. John C.C. Fan, Kopin president and CEO. Also read: LED makers could diversify with GaN power electronics production

Results were published in the Applied Physics Letters of the American Institute of Physics: Laboutin et al., Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 100, p. 121909, March 23, 2012.

Kopin used indium gallium nitride (InGaN) as the conducting layer in HEMT structures grown on sapphire and silicon carbide (SiC) substrates. The InGaN channel layer provides a back-channel barrier for electron confinement that GaN does not offer. This enables deep sub-micron gate length devices to achieve ultra-high-frequency operation.

To prevent InGaN layers from becoming very rough during growth, Kopin uses proprietary metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) growth processes.

Kopin Corporation makes mobile computing headsets, ruggedized military imaging systems, ultra-small liquid crystal displays and heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). Kopin has expertise in heteroepitaxy and III-V transistor wafers. For more information, please visit www.kopin.com.

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March 29, 2012 — Light emitting diode (LED) replacement lamps — used in existing sockets as replacements for legacy lighting sources in residential and commercial indoor applications — will see 30% unit growth 2012-2016, says Strategies Unlimited in its LED Replacement Lamps Market Analysis and Forecast. The global market will grow from $2.2 billion in 2011 to $3.7 billion in 2016, even with an anticipated 14%/year decline in average selling prices (ASP).

LEDs remain in oversupply on the market, which will benefit lighting product manufacturers. Governmental subsidies that aim to advance the adoption of LED lighting will also spur growth.

While 2011 saw replacement LED purchases driven mostly by commercial applications in developed economies, this trend will reverse to developing countries as the construction sector picks up. China is expected to adopt LED replacement units at a 44% compound annual growth rate through the forecast period — the highest for any region.

LED replacements for linear fluorescent lamps yielded the highest units sales numbers in China and Japan; between 2010 and 2011 the average selling price declined at 23%. The U.S. and European markets yielded fewer sales due to stricter requirements for product quality.

Strategies Unlimited conducts research on the LED market as is a research unit of PennWell Corporation, a global media and information company. PennWell’s many brands include LEDs Magazine, Solid State Technology, and Laser Focus World.

For more information on report availability, contact Tim Carli, sales manager at +1 650 946-3163; [email protected], or go to www.strategies-u.com.