A team of University of Tokyo researchers in Japan has developed a technology for creating GaN LEDs on glass substrate, which could not only cut manufacturing costs but also help to develop OLED light panels.

The researchers use a sputtering method to transcribe the GaN LEDs onto the glass substrate. The team has not yet measured luminous efficiency or external quantum efficiency for any single color but is currently testing the efficiency of the internal quantum at low temperatures.

InGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have been widely accepted as highly efficient light sources capable of replacing incandescent bulbs but applications of InGaN LEDs are limited to small devices because their fabrication process involves expensive epitaxial growth of InGaN by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy on single-crystal wafers.

During the 2014 trip to China, our supplier YunSun was kind enough to pick us up in Shenzhen and give us a tour of their factory.

YunSun buys their dies from a high quality Taiwanese company.

Three thin sheets containing 12,000 LEDs soon to be hatched!

LED wire bonding machine. This attaches a hair-thin gold wire from the top of the LED die to the anode lead.

One of the first things that surprised me on this tour was that the entire operation was done in open air. For some reason I assumed manipulating silicon dies required clean room technology. I could do this in my basement! Hmm…

Once the wire bond is in place and the adhesive is cured, the lead frame gets placed in the LED mold and gets epoxy resin pushed in around the lead frames.

Revenue from the global LED Lighting market for buildings hit $8.1 billion in 2013 and is forecast to rise to about $10.3 billion by the end of 2014 according to market research analyst, Memoori Research.

Yankun Fu identifies the transient conditions that are benign to LED components and those that can induce electrical overstress (EOS) and catastrophic failure and suggests some ways to minimize the potential for EOS.

Dr Andy Davies explains how advent of new generation controls offer numerous benefits for indoor lighting applications.

Dr. Uwe Vogel of the Center for Organic Materials & Electronic Devices Dresden (COMEDD) outlines how a see-through OLED display is going eye-interactive.

The LED front-end manufacturing sector is facing a triple assault that will shape the way the market performs in the future forecasts market intelligence analyst Yole Développement in a new report.

Increased demand for larger size sapphire wafers with big players, such as LG, Sharp or Osram moving to 6 inch wafers and Taiwanese players moving to 4 inch wafers.
Increased demand for PSS that has now become mainstream in the industry (87% share as of Q1-2014), even if some questions remain concerning key patent holders’ strategies. Development of GaN-on-Si and GaN-on-GaN LEDs with both technologies having begun mass production in some companies (such as Soraa for GaN, or Toshiba for
Si).

“New LED substrate is one of the key topics impacting the LED front-end industry”,

Market analysts agree that the traditional lighting market will start to decline from around 2017. By which time LED lighting technologies will account for more than half of the overall lighting market.

European lighting manufacturers are facing up to almost a ‘Perfect Storm’ in which the looming price war for LED bulbs is set to bite into profits just at the time when a period of low growth is expected as the long-life bulbs become more common.

“In the residential area, costs are still seen as relatively high,” explained Osram Chief Technology Officer Peter Laier. “You’re also getting a product that lasts at least 10 times longer.”

The group coated the semiconductor material gallium nitride with a layer of phosphorus-derived acid while simultaneously applying a self-assembling phosphonic material.

“By coating polar GaN with a self-assembling layer of phosphonic groups, we were able to increase luminescence without increasing energy input,”

An Osram research team has claimed to have succeeded in constructing the most efficient LED lamp in the world which achieves an efficiency level of 215 lumens per watt.

The lamp in tubular form consumes only half the power of current common fluorescent and LED tubes, and also achieves significantly superior colour rendering.

The device consumes 19W.