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A team of engineers from Cornell University, the University of Notre Dame and the semiconductor company IQE has created gallium nitride (GaN) power diodes capable of serving as the building blocks for future GaN power switches — with applications spanning nearly all electronics products and electricity distribution infrastructures.

Power semiconductor devices are a critical part of the energy infrastructure — all electronics rely on them to control or convert electrical energy. Silicon-based semiconductors are rapidly approaching their performance limits within electronics, so materials such as GaN are being explored as potential replacements that may render silicon switches obsolete.

But along with having many desirable features as a material, GaN is notorious for its defects and reliability issues. So the team zeroed in on devices based on GaN with record-low defect concentrations to probe GaN’s ultimate performance limits for power electronics. They describe their results in a paper in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.

“Our engineering goal is to develop inexpensive, reliable, high-efficiency switches to condition electricity — from where it’s generated to where it’s consumed within electric power systems — to replace generations-old, bulky, and inefficient technologies,” said Zongyang Hu, a postdoc working in Professor Grace Huili Xing’s research group within the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. “GaN-based power devices are enabling technologies to achieve this goal.”

The team examined semiconductor p-n junctions, made by joining p-type (free holes) and n-type (free electrons) semiconductor materials, which have direct applications in solar cells, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), rectifiers in circuits, and numerous variations in more complex devices such as power transistors. “For our work, high-voltage p-n junction diodes are used to probe the material properties of GaN,” Hu explained.

To describe how much the device’s current-voltage characteristics deviate from the ideal case in a defect-free semiconductor system, the team uses a “diode ideality factor.” This is “an extremely sensitive indicator of the bulk defects, interface and surface defects, and resistance of the device,” he added.

Defects exist within all materials, but at varying levels. “So one parameter we used to effectively describe the defect level in a material is the Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH) recombination lifetime,” Hu said.

SRH lifetime is the averaged time it takes injected electrons and holes in the junction to move around before recombining at defects. “The lower the defect level, the longer the SRH lifetime,” Hu explained. “It’s also interesting to note that for GaN, a longer SRH lifetime results in a brighter light emission produced by the diode.”

The work is significant because many researchers around the globe are working to find ways to make GaN materials reliable for use within future electronics. Due to the presence of defects with high concentrations in typical GaN materials today, GaN-based devices often operate at a fraction of what GaN is truly capable of.

It’s worth noting that, in 2014, a Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three scientists for making seminal and breakthrough contributions to the field of GaN-based LEDs. Though operating at compromised conditions, GaN LEDs are helping to shift the global lighting industry to a much more energy-efficient, solid-state lighting era.

The work led by Xing at Cornell University is the first report of GaN p-n diodes with near-ideal performance in all aspects simultaneously: a unity ideality factor, avalanche breakdown voltage, and about a two-fold improvement in device figure-of-merits over previous records.

“Our results are an important step toward understanding the intrinsic properties and the true potential of GaN,” Hu noted. “And these achievements are only possible in high-quality GaN device structures (an effort led by IQE engineers) prepared on high-quality GaN bulk substrates and with precisely tuned fabrication technologies (an effort led by Dr. Kazuki Nomoto, a research associate at Cornell University).”

One big surprise for the team came in the form of unexpectedly low differential-on-resistance of the GaN diode. “It’s as if the body of the entire p-n diode is transparent to the current flow without resistance,” he said. “We believe this is due to high-level injection of minority carriers and their long lifetime, and are exploring it further.”

The team’s work is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) “SWITCHES” program, monitored by Dr. Timothy Heidel. “Leading one of these projects, we at Cornell, in collaboration with our industrial partners IQE, Qorvo, and UTRC, have established an integrated plan to develop three terminal GaN power transistors, package them, and insert them into circuits and products,” Xing said.

Beyond the DOE ARPA-E project, the team is open to collaboration with any researchers or companies interested in helping drive GaN power electronics to its fruition.

Light and electricity dance a complicated tango in devices like LEDs, solar cells and sensors. A new anti-reflection coating developed by engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, lets light through without hampering the flow of electricity, a step that could increase efficiency in such devices.

An array of nanopillars etched by thin layer of grate-patterned metal creates a nonreflective surface that could improve electronic device performance. Credit: Image courtesy of Daniel Wasserman

The coating is a specially engraved, nanostructured thin film that allows more light through than a flat surface, yet also provides electrical access to the underlying material – a crucial combination for optoelectronics, devices that convert electricity to light or vice versa. The researchers, led by U. of I. electrical and computer engineering professor Daniel Wasserman, published their findings in the journal Advanced Materials.

“The ability to improve both electrical and optical access to a material is an important step towards higher-efficiency optoelectronic devices,” said Wasserman, a member of the Micro and Nano Technology Laboratory at Illinois.

At the interface between two materials, such as a semiconductor and air, some light is always reflected, Wasserman said. This limits the efficiency of optoelectronic devices. If light is emitted in a semiconductor, some fraction of this light will never escape the semiconductor material. Alternatively, for a sensor or solar cell, some fraction of light will never make it to the detector to be collected and turned into an electrical signal. Researchers use a model called Fresnel’s equations to describe the reflection and transmission at the interface between two materials.

“It has been long known that structuring the surface of a material can increase light transmission,” said study co-author Viktor Podolskiy, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “Among such structures, one of the more interesting is similar to structures found in nature, and is referred to as a ‘moth-eye’ pattern: tiny nanopillars which can ‘beat’ the Fresnel equations at certain wavelengths and angles.”

Although such patterned surfaces aid in light transmission, they hinder electrical transmission, creating a barrier to the underlying electrical material.

“In most cases, the addition of a conducting material to the surface results in absorption and reflection, both of which will degrade device performance,” Wasserman said.

The Illinois and Massachusetts team used a patented method of metal-assisted chemical etching, MacEtch, developed at Illinois by Xiuling Li, U. of I. professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-author of the new paper. The researchers used MacEtch to engrave a patterned metal film into a semiconductor to create an array of tiny nanopillars rising above the metal film. The combination of these “moth-eye” nanopillars and the metal film created a partially coated material that outperformed the untreated semiconductor.

“The nanopillars enhance the optical transmission while the metal film offers electrical contact. Remarkably, we can improve our optical transmission and electrical access simultaneously,” said Runyu Liu, a graduate researcher at Illinois and a co-lead author of the work along with Illinois graduate researcher Xiang Zhao and Massachusetts graduate researcher Christopher Roberts.

The researchers demonstrated that their technique, which results in metal covering roughly half of the surface, can transmit about 90 percent of light to or from the surface. For comparison, the bare, unpatterned surface with no metal can only transmit 70 percent of the light and has no electrical contact.

The researchers also demonstrated their ability to tune the material’s optical properties by adjusting the metal film’s dimensions and how deeply it etches into the semiconductor.

“We are looking to integrate these nanostructured films with optoelectronic devices to demonstrate that we can simultaneously improve both the optical and electronic properties of devices operating at wavelengths from the visible all the way to the far infrared,” Wasserman said.

Cambridge Nanotherm, a producer of thermal management technology, has won the “LED Lighting Product of the Year” award at the 2015 Elektra Awards for its “Nanotherm DM” product. The industry’s largest technology and business awards, the Elektras is in its 13th year of celebrating the best the electronics industry has achieved.

Cambridge Nanotherm beat stiff competition from NASDAQ listed ON Semiconductor, Khatod Optoelectronics and Zeta Specialist Lighting to win the LED Lighting Product of the Year category. Commenting on the award the judges noted that Nanotherm DM is uniquely compatible with standard manufacturing processes and picked up on the fact that the company manufactures Nanotherm DM at its facility near Cambridge and exports to customers in the US and Asia.

Nanotherm DM is a robust and cost effective alternative to aluminium nitride, an electronics grade ceramic that is used in thermally challenging electronics. The production of Nanotherm DM involves a patented ‘ECO’ process (Electro Chemical Oxidation) that converts the surface of aluminium into a nanoceramic dielectric layer. The nanoceramic aluminium is completed with a copper circuit sputtered onto the nanoceramic to customer specifications. This results in a material with thermal properties that rival aluminium nitride but with the mechanical properties of aluminium that offers the best thermal performance to price ratio available.

Initially targeted at Chip-on-Board modules and LED packaging markets, Nanotherm DM enables LED manufacturers to make significant cost savings without impacting the performance of their products.

Collecting the award on Tuesday night Mike Edwards, Sales Director, said: “Winning an Elektra award is testament to the hard work and dedication our team has put into the development and commercialisation of Nanotherm DM. It cements Nanotherm’s place at the vanguard of UK high-technology manufacturing and I’m delighted to be taking the award back to our manufacturing facility in Haverhill. 2016 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for Nanotherm as we continue to ramp up our production capabilities to meet unprecedented demand for our thermal management solutions.”

The win follows on from Nanotherm being shortlisted for the R&D 100 awards and winning the 2015 Insider Media Made in the East technology award.

The winners of the 2015 were announced on the Tuesday 24th November at the awards ceremony taking place at The Lancaster, London.

By Sue Davis, Director of Business Development & Senior Analyst, Techcet

IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA 2015, held in Santa Clara, CA Nov 18-19, is one mega conference with 8 co-located tracks ranging from sensor technology & wearables to IoT, energy harvesting & storage to electric vehicles, 3D printing and graphene. IDTechEx completely occupied the Santa Clara Convention Center; throughout the day attendees and exhibitors commented attendance was up over prior years. To the dismay of some late arrivals, parking spaces were at a premium.

A venue with >200 exhibitors showcasing new technologies and applications connected conference attendees with equipment and materials suppliers, OEMs, end users, research institutes and academia.

Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx, kicked off the conference by sharing a key trends including:

  • Structural electronics are here now!
  • The Fashion industry is converging with technology (and evidenced by a number of exhibitors from this sector)
  • Stretchable electronics R&D has ramped significantly in the last 12 months
  • Printed and flexible electronics manufacturing is becoming center stage

Dr. Mounir Zok, a keynote speaker and biomedical engineering specialist for the US Olympic committee started his talk with a quote “The blink of an eye dictates gold vs no medal.” He emphasized that technology is a key enabler to continually improve sports performance.

Highlights from exhibitors and speakers follow.

Keith McMillen, founder and CEO of BeBop Sensors and avid musician, shared his journey of developing smart fabric cylindrical sensors to analyze a violinist’s bow movement led to utilizing this technology for the Internet of Things and the founding of BeBop Sensors.

BeBop Sensor Examples

BeBop Sensor Examples

Dream car in every facet; aesthetics, functionality and environmental impact understates the design of the Blade Car. Keith Czinger, CEO and Founder of Divergent discussed the foundation for Blade’s development was deeply rooted in reducing environmental impact while ensuring high performance. Divergent reports that manual chassis assembly can be completed within 30 minutes utilizing its’ node network. Nodes are manufactured of a metal alloy and produced using 3D printers. The light and strong chassis is comprised of these nodes and with carbon fiber tubes.

Divergent Blade utilizing 3D printing for node-tube chassis

Divergent Blade utilizing 3D printing for node-tube chassis

Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) manufactured via additive 3D printing technology, vs. conventional processing labor, material and time intensive processes was demonstrated at NanoDimension’s booth. Simon Fried, CMO and Co-Founder of NanoDimension discussed the benefit of 3D printed circuit boards (prototyping in hours vs weeks, design flexibility, process repeatability, …). In addition to development the DragonFly 3D printer, NanoDimension has developed a line of specialty conductive inks.

NanoDimension DragonFly 200 3D Printer

NanoDimension DragonFly 200 3D Printer

Sensoria Fitness has developed a line of wear fitness clothing and integrated running system that communicates with iOS and Android apps. A key use case is the gait analysis capability to assist with performance running and to assist clinicians with treatment plans for dysfunctional gait patterns.

Sensoria Fitness Socks (Innovation Awards at CES 2015 & IDTechEx 2015 USA)

Sensoria Fitness Socks (Innovation Awards at CES 2015 & IDTechEx 2015 USA)

View Technologies, a joint venture between Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. and RF Controls, has developed the inView Platform that enables 3rd party applications to run more efficiently and accurately. This platform is comprised of Echo antenna(s) and three tiers of service that allow you Locate, Track and Act depending on business needs. Location service provide as real-time stream of 3D position data for Passive UHF RFID tags.

View Technologies - Manufacturing Application

View Technologies – Manufacturing Application

Valencell develops high-performance biometric sensor technology and licenses its technology to a variety of consumer electronics manufacturers, mobile device and accessory makers, sports and fitness brands, gaming companies, and first-responder/military suppliers for integration into their products.

Products utilizing Valencell’s Biometric Sensor Technolgy

Products utilizing Valencell’s Biometric Sensor Technolgy

Another show highlight was Demonstration Street, a dedicated area on the show floor for product demonstrations in various stages of development – prototype to commercialization- featured printed flexible displays including posters, e-readers, audio paper, interactive games, OLED displays, electronics in fabrics, interactive printed controls and menus, printed RFID and more.

IDTechEx 2015 USA offered a myriad of opportunities to interact with technologists and exhibitors attend hundreds of insightful presentations. Master classes covering an array of topics and company tours bookended the two-day conference and exhibition. The main challenge was to create a “show plan” in hopes that one would be able to attend desired presentations and exhibits.

Vacuum technology trends can be seen over the period of innovation defined by Moore’s Law, particularly in the areas of increasing shaft speed, management of pumping power, and the use computer modeling.

BY MIKE CZERNIAK, Edwards UK, Crawley, England

The sub-fab lies beneath. And down there in that thicket of pipes amidst the hum of vacuum pumps, the sentinel of gas combustors and the pulse of muscular machinery doing real work — innovation has also played a crucial role in enabling Moore’s Law. Without it the glamor boys up top with their bunny suits and FOUPS would not have achieved the marvelous feats of engineering derring-do for which they are so deservedly celebrated.

Vacuum and abatement are two of the most critical functions of the sub-fab. Many process tools require vacuum in the process chamber to permit the process to function. Vacuum pumps not only provide the required vacuum, they also remove unused process gases and by-products. Abatement systems then treat those gasses so they are safe to release or dispose. Vacuum and abatement systems in the sub-fab have had to innovate just as dramatically as the exposure, deposition and etch tools of the fab. In many cases, new processes would not have been possible without new vacuum pumps that could handle new materials and new abatement systems that could make those materials safe for release or disposal.

Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law originated in a paper published in 1965 and titled “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” written by Gordon Moore, then director of research and engineering at Fairchild Semiconductor [1]. In it Moore observed that the economics of the integrated circuit manufacturing process defined a minimum cost at a certain number of components per circuit and that this number had been doubling every two years as the manufacturing technology evolved. He believed that the trend would continue for at least the short term, and perhaps as long as ten years. His observation became a mantra for the industry, soon to be known as Moore’s Law (FIGURE 1).

Vaccuum 1

More an astute observation than a law, Moore’s Law is remarkable in several respects. First, the rate of improvement it predicts, doubling every two years, is unheard in any other major industry. In “Moore’s Curse” (IEEE, March 2015) Vaclav Smil calculated historical rates of improvement for a variety of essential indus- tries over the last couple of centuries and found typical rates of a few percent, and order of magnitude less than Moore’s rate [2]. Second, is its longevity. Moore thought it was good for the short term, perhaps as long as ten years. This is perhaps due, at least partly, to the unique role Moore’s Law has assumed within the semicon- ductor industry where it has become both a guide to and driver of the pace of innovation. The Law has become a guiding principle – you shall introduce a new generation with double the performance every two years. It is a rule to live by, enshrined in the industry’s roadmap, and violated only at great peril. Only painfully did Intel recently admit that the doubling period for its latest generation appeared to have stretched to something more like two and a half years [3]. To an extent the Law is a self-fulfilling prophecy, which some have argued works to the detriment of the industry when it forces the release of new processes before they are fully optimized. Whatever you might think of it, the Law’s persistence is remarkable. The literature is full of dire predictions of its demise, all of which, at least so far, have proven premature.

Finally we must ask, what is meant by the names assigned to each new node? What exactly does 14nm, the current state of the art, mean? Although Moore originally described the number of components per integrated circuit, the Law was soon interpreted to apply to the density of transistors in a circuit. This was variously construed. Some measured it as the size of the smallest feature that could be created, which determined the length of the transistor gate. Others pointed to the spacing between the lines of the first layer of metal conductors connecting the transistors, the metal-1 half-pitch. These may have been a fairly accurate measures twenty years ago at the 0.35μm node, but node names have since steadily lost their connection to physical features of the device. It would be difficult to point to any physical dimension at the 14nm node that is actually 14nm. For instance, the FinFET transistor in a 22nm chip is 35nm long and the fin is 8nm wide.

What remains true is that in each successive generation the transistors are smaller and more densely packed and performance is significantly increased. Each generation seems to be named with a smaller number that is approximately 70% of the previous generation, reflecting the fact that a 70% shrink in linear dimension equates to a 50% reduction in area and therefore a nominal doubling in transistor density.

Enabling Moore’s Law in the sub-fab: A brief chronology

In the 1980s, new semiconductor processes and increasing gas flows associated with larger diameter wafers led to problems with aggressive chemicals and solids collecting in the oil used in oil-lubricated “wet” pumps, resulting in short service intervals and high cost of ownership. These were resolved by the development and introduction of oil-free “dry pumps” which have subsequently become the semiconductor industry standard.

Dry rotary pumps require extremely tight running clearances and multiple stages to achieve a practical level of vacuum. Additional cost of these machines, however was more than offset by the benefits offered to semiconductor manufacturing. Dry pumps use a variety of pumping mechanisms — roots, claw, screw and scroll (FIGURE 2).

Vaccuum 2

Many of these are new concepts, but modern machining capabilities made it possible to produce them at a realistic cost, the most notable being Edwards’ introduction of the first oil-free dry pump in the 1980’s. Each pumping mechanism has been successfully deployed and each has its own advantages and disadvantages in a given application. The scroll pump, for example, is unique in its ability to economically scale down to much smaller sizes.

In the early 1990s it became apparent that with the introduction of dry pumps, the pump oil no longer acted as a “wet scrubber” to collect process by-product gases, which therefore passed into the exhaust system. The solution was the development of the Gas Reactor Column (GRC) to chemically capture process exhaust gases in a disposable/recyclable cartridge, minimizing exhaust emissions to the atmosphere.

At about the same, new, more aggressive process gases being used in leading-edge semiconductor processes posed significant challenges for turbo molecular pumps (TMPs) due to the damage they caused to the mechanical bearings used to support their high-speed rotating shafts (typically ~40,000 rpm). Turbo pumps use rapidly spinning blades to impart direction to gas molecules, propelling them through multiple stages of increasing pressure. Early turbo pumps used oil- or grease-lubricated bearings. Similar to the problems encountered with oil sealed rotary pumps, the new process chemicals tended to degrade the oil, frequently causing pumping failures in as little as a few weeks. This problem was solved by introducing magnetic bearings to levitate the pump drive shaft and eliminate the need for lubricating oil.

In the mid-1990s the semiconductor industry started to use perfluorinated compounds (PFC’s) as a convenient source of chamber cleaning and etch gases. However, since only ~30% of the input gas was consumed in the process chamber, there were considerable PFC emissions to the atmosphere. Of particular concern was CF4 due to its half-life of 50,000 years. The solution was the Thermal Processor Unit which offered the first system with proven destruction reaction efficiency (DRE) of 90% or more for CF4.

In the 2000’s safety concerns regarding the increasing use of toxic gases led to increasing concerns about the abatement of these materials before they were released to the environment and the safety of personnel within the fab. Integrated vacuum and abatement systems, where everything is contained in a sealed and extracted enclosure, offer a significant improvement in safety. Integrated systems have since been refined with improvements such as a common control system, reduced footprint and installation costs, and shorter pipelines to reduce operating and maintenance costs.

Abatement systems have continued to evolve. New processes using new materials often require a different approach the abatement. For example, new technologies were developed for high hydrogen processes, copper interconnects and low k dielectrics.

Trends and prospects

Certain vacuum technology trends can be seen over this history of innovation, particularly in the areas of increasing shaft speed, management of pumping power, and the use computer modeling to monitor performance and predict when maintenance will be required so that it can be synchronized with other activities in the fab.

Shaft Speed

When dry pumps were first introduced, they typically operated at around 3,000 to 3,600 rpm. Today’s dry pumps use electric drives to run considerably faster, typically 6,000 rpm for claw, screw, and multi-stage roots pumps (FIGURE 3).

Vaccuum 3

Increasing a pump’s rotational speed delivers a number of advantages. It makes it possible to build more compact pumps and motors, with less internal leakage, which in turn, enables a reduction in the number of pump stages required. It also allows the speed to be reduced when wafers are not being processed, thereby saving energy. Combined, these benefits help reduce the overall pump cost.

Each type of pumping mechanism has different characteristics in the size and shape of volume to fill. A scroll mechanism, with a narrow, ported inlet and long, thin volume space, is one of the slowest pumping mechanisms to fill, so its performance does not increase in proportion to increasing shaft speed. Most scroll pumps operate at just 1500 rpm. A roots mechanism, by contrast, has a very large opening and a short volume length, enabling it to fill quickly allowing efficient use of higher shaft speeds.

The conductance ceiling for roots and screw pumps is probably ~15,000 rpm. Achieving this speed, will require incremental improvements in materials, bearings, and drives. It is likely that we will reach the conductance ceiling for most of the current primary pumping mechanisms within the next decade, although some, such as roots and screw mechanisms, may prove more durable than others.

Turbomolecular pump conductance is governed by blade speed and molecular velocities. Turbo performance has been limited primarily by the maximum speed the bearings and rotor can withstand. The industry is looking for new materials that are lighter and stronger to enable increased speed. While this pump type may be reaching its conductive limit on heavier gases, it is far from reaching it for lighter gases, such as hydrogen. This may take a much longer time to achieve.

Power management

Significant advances have been made in improving the energy efficiency of both vacuum pumps and abatement systems. Improvements in pump design have increased energy efficiency. Variable speed motors and controllers allow better matching of the motor speed to varying pump requirements. Idle mode allows both pumps and abatement systems to go into a low power mode when not in use. Improvements in burner design have reduced the fuel consumption of combustion based abatement. With the increase in concern about environmental impact and carbon foot print continued improvement in this area can be expected.

Modeling

Computer modeling has been applied extensively to all stages of pump performance. Such variables as stage size, running clearance, leakage, and conductance can all be modeled quite effectively. This allows design simulation and the optimization of performance, such as the shape of the power and speed curve. In this way, a pump can be designed for specific duties, such as load lock pumping or processing high hydrogen flows (FIGURE 4).

Vaccuum 4

Vacuum pumps of the future will be more reliable and capable of operating for longer periods of time before requiring maintenance. They will be safer to operate, will occupy less fab space, run cleaner and require less power, as well as generate less noise, vibration, and heat. They will also have improved corrosion resistance and the ability to run hotter when required.

As a result, vacuum pumps will be more environmentally friendly, running cleaner and using less power to help reduce their carbon footprint. In addition, they will likely make much greater use of recycled materials and use fewer consumables, thereby helping to reduce overall pump costs. The pumps will be easier to clean, repair, and rebuild for reuse.

Likely technical developments will also include higher shaft speeds, a growing proliferation of pump mechanisms and combinations of mechanisms to increase performance. Finally, vacuum pumps will incorporate new materials and improved modelling to further sharpen performance and reduce system and operating costs.

References

1. G. Moore, “Cramming more Components onto Integrated Circuits” in Electronics, April 19, 1965.
2. V. Smil, “Moore’s Curse” in IEEE Spectrum, March 19, 2015.
3. R. Courtland, “The Status of Moore’s Law: It’s Complicated” in IEEE Spectrum October 28, 2013.

MIKE CZERNIAK is the Environmental Solutions Business Development Manager, Edwards UK, Crawley, England.

Baltimore, MD — November 11, 2015 — Pixelligent, a leader in high-index advanced materials, today launched a new family of PixClear® materials for display and optical components and films. The PixClear product line is now available in a new solvent system — a low boiling ethyl acetate (ETA) — that delivers the same high performance while easing integration with customer manufacturing processes. Now leading manufacturing companies will have the choice of a standard, high boiling propylene glycol methyl ether acetate (PGMEA) or the low boiling ETA for their testing. These materials are available in both 20 percent and 50 percent loadings for PixClear PG and PixClear PB.

“The launch of our new PixClear ETA materials is a response to customer demand. These low boiling ETA dispersions will result in brighter, clearer devices produced at a lower cost, which directly supports reducing time to innovation for our customers in the display and adhesives space,” said Craig Bandes, President and CEO of Pixelligent. “At Pixelligent, we continue to expand our matrix of high quality, high-index nanomaterials in order to support the growth of our customers.” Matt Healy, Vice President of Product Management adds, “In August, we launched a full OLED materials family, which includes four products for testing internal light extraction structures for OLED lighting. All totaled, we have introduced 12 new products for customer testing in the past three months.”

PixClear zirconia dispersions are now available for order in two solvents, and at two different loadings, to complement the processes used for the production of displays and optical components.

Berkeley, CA, October 29, 2015 — Pixelligent, a leader in high-index materials, announced today the development of a new OLED light extraction technology that dramatically increases light output in their customer’s OLED Lighting devices. Pixelligent founder and chief technology officer, Dr. Gregory Cooper, presented the new technology at the 17th Annual OLEDs World Summit.

These new nanocomposite materials, which combine scattering particles along with PixClear® zirconia, are delivering significant improvements in light extraction and efficiency for numerous OLED lighting applications. “This class of materials represents the next generation of Pixelligent’s technology development strategy. In fact, we have seen light output double in devices that our partners and customers have tested with our PixClear® OLED products,” said Pixelligent Founder & CTO, Gregory Cooper.

Dr. Cooper’s presentation at the conference included the numerous breakthroughs Pixelligent has achieved in OLED lighting applications, derived from its proprietary light extraction nanocomposite materials. These new OLED materials will enable Pixelligent’s customers to deliver new OLED Lighting devices with unprecedented light extraction and cost efficiencies.

 

Applied Materials, Inc. today unveiled two new systems that enable the volume production of high-resolution, thin and lightweight flexible OLED displays for mobile products and TVs. The Applied AKT-20K (TM) TFE PECVD (thin-film encapsulation; plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition) and Applied AKT-40K (TM) TFE PECVD tools deliver breakthroughs in materials engineering to deposit thin-film encapsulation barrier layers that are crucial for protecting extremely sensitive OLED devices. These systems allow display makers to replace the rigid insulating front glass on the devices and bring to market bendable and curved displays for a new generation of consumer products.

The vibrant color and low power consumption of OLED displays have driven their rapid adoption in smartphones, with flexible OLED now the fastest growing display segment in the mobile industry. The new TFE systems (20K for 925 x 1500mm and 40K for 1250 x 2200mm) address different display market segments to meet the growing demand for more versatile, thinner and lighter small- and large-area flexible OLEDs.

“The advances in size, resolution, picture quality and form factor creates considerable market opportunities for display makers to bring new flexible products to market,” said Dr. Brian Shieh, vice president and general manager of Applied’s Display Products Group. “Flexible OLEDs must be robust enough to meet the real-life demands of consumers, and the Applied AKT-20K TFE system, already in production, allows panel makers to accelerate the introduction of flexible and curved mobile applications that will change the shape of the screens we use every day.”

Key to the Applied AKT TFE product line is the capability to extend the lifetime of flexible OLEDs by offering diffusion barrier films with very low water and oxygen penetration. These high-performance films, deposited at low temperatures of <100°C, address the susceptibility of OLED material to degrade when exposed to environmental elements. In addition, the systems’ unique vision alignment technology ensures accurate and precise mask positioning and deposition, allowing display manufacturers to eliminate photolithography and etch process steps and reduce production costs.

Richard Friend of the Cavendish Laboratory, at the University of Cambridge and colleagues, have blended poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (F8) and a poly(para-phenylenevinylene) (PPV) copolymer known as Super Yellow (SY) and used cesium carbonate in their LED’s negative electrode to minimize quenching and give them ultrahigh efficiency devices.

Balancing the charges in the emissive layer of a polymer light emitting diode (PLED) maximizes light output from the device, the researchers report. Many teams have attempted to achieve perfect charge balance by introducing hole transport layers, that carry the “opposite” of electrons, positive holes, using electron injection layers and tuning polymer blends to improve energy transfer. There is, however, always a trade-off between electronic and optical properties. Friend and his colleagues hoped that PLEDs with ultrahigh luminous efficiency, low operating voltage and reasonably large current density should be possible.

By blending the right polymers at the right levels (in this case 9 parts F8 to 1 part SY), the team has now been able to manipulate how well holes can move, hole-mobility, by exploiting the difference in energy levels, the molecular orbitals, of the polymers. Additionally, they swapped the conventional calcium-aluminum negative electrode, cathode, system for one containing a thin layer of cesium carbonate. This layer allows electrons to be efficiently injected into the LED in order to stimulate light emission.

The team reports an ultrahigh efficiency in their device of approximately 27 candelas per amp. In comparison a device based only on SY rather than the polymer blend lights up to only about 12.5 cd/A. This “excellent performance” for the blended device, the team suggests, arises because of the intrinsic hole trapping nature of the blend system, which they explain is further enhanced by accomplishing a perfect charge balance via efficient electron injection.

“The next step could be further optimization of the performance by varying the thickness of the emissive layer and calcium carbonate,” explains team member Muhammad Umair Hassan. “Our experiments reveal that this optimization is very important.”

LG Innotek, a leading global materials and components manufacturer, today announced that the company started to produce high-power LED packages (H35C4 Series) featuring 180lm/W, which are the highest efficacy in the world.

LG Innotek improves the efficacy of high-power LED packages by 13% compared to the previous packages. The Company said that the H35C4 Series will be supplied to the global market in October.

LG Innotek used its proprietary vertical LED chip technology to optimize the manufacturing and mixing process of the fluorescent substance that produces the light for its LED chips, thus improving the performance of their LED packages. This performance is at least 10% better than all other competing products.

These LED packages boast a efficacy of 152lm/W at 85℃, 700mA under the actual usage environment of most LED packages. It beats the efficacy of competing products by 10lm/W or more.

Through optimizing “white conversion technology”, the lifespan of the product has also in-creased greatly. According to the expected lifespan based on LM-80, the LED lighting reliability evaluation criteria used by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average lifespan of LG Innotek’s product is 150,000 hours. This is almost three times longer than existing products, which have a lifespan of 51,000 hours.

In addition, LG Innotek has established a product line-up that encompass all ranges of color temperatures and rendering, including warm white (2700K), neutral white (5000K), cool day-light (6500K), and High CRI (CRI>90). Customers can apply these products for their use in LED lighting.

LG Innotek will further stay focused on developing high performance and value product such as High Power LED Package featuring more than 5 watt and UV LED. The company also has a plan to enhance its LED lighting line-up for automotive as well mobile application.