Demand for gallium is forecast to rise rapidly between 2014 and 2020 as general lighting moves away from incandescent and fluorescent lamps to light-emitting diodes (LEDs).  This strong growth is not, however, likely to result in any tightness in supply as the market is oversupplied and likely to remain so.  

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new processing technique that makes light emitting diodes (LEDs) brighter and more resilient by coating the semiconductor material gallium nitride (GaN) with a layer of phosphorus-derived acid.

To accelerate the adoption of high quality, energy efficient LED lighting Con Edison of New York is offering substantial rebates (approximately $22, based on 13.2¢/kWh) on Soraa’s GaN on GaN™, full visible spectrum LED MR16 lamps. With the rebates, New York City businesses now have another incentive to install Soraa’s MR16 LED lamps, well known as the best LED MR16 retrofit lamp available, delivering the highest light output, color rendering, whiteness, and beam of any comparable product. Soraa will help you transform your ordinary li...

Cree, Inc., yesterday announced that it signed a non-exclusive worldwide patent license agreement with Transphorm, Inc. that provides access to Cree’s extensive family of patents related to GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) and GaN Schottky diode devices for use in the field of power conversion devices. The licensed family of patents addresses various aspects of making GaN power devices, including nitride materials, HEMT and Schottky diode designs and processing technology. While GaN HEMTs are already used extensively in RF markets by Cree and...

A surge in demand for Soraa’s full visible spectrum GaN on GaN™ LED MR16 lamps has led the company to appoint two new leaders to its sales organization—George Stringer and Nick Farraway. George joins the company as Senior Vice President of North America Sales and Nick joins as Senior Vice President of International Sales; both will report to Tom Caulfield, President and COO of Soraa. “The Soraa VIVID LED MR16 lamp is widely regarded as the best in the world in terms of brightness and color rendering—this has fuel...

Plessey is working closely with Plymouth City Council, to help achieve the Council's carbon reduction strategy for all their managed buildings and infrastructure. Plessey recently released the first commercially available 350mW GaN-on-silicon LEDs. The lighting products are manufactured on Plessey’s 6-inch MAGIC (Manufactured on GaN I/C) line. The GaN-on-silicon LEDs use a much thinner GaN layer at only 2.5μm, and they are cheaper than LEDs grown on sapphire or SiC. This latest solid-state LED lighting solution to be employed in Pl...

Soraa has recently released the first GaN on GaN LED in a 50W halogen equivalent MR16 lamp with several new features.This LED has a gallium nitride substrate, triangular shaped chip, simplified epitaxial structure and an original silicon-based wafer level packaging. Soraa GaN on GaN LED packaged in a silicon-based wafer level packaging Source: Yole Développement Soraa used the GaN characteristics like the optical transparency and the high electrical and thermal conductivity to create a unique vertical structure for these LEDs. The layers depos...

Plessey Semiconductors Ltd says that samples of 350mW GaN-on-Si LEDs are now available. The entry-level lighting products are manufactured on Plessey’s 6-inch MAGIC (Manufactured on GaN I/C) line at its Plymouth, England facility. The new LEDs are targeted at a variety of solid-state lighting and entertainment-type lighting products including accent lighting, wall washing, wall grazing, strip-lighting and pulse lighting applications. “The MAGIC LED product range is expanding in both light output and efficacy. The PLB010350 is our fi...

According to IHS isuppli's research's report titled “Q2 GaN LED Supply and Demand”, more than 100 billion GaN LEDs will ship in 2013. It means that there are 15 GaN LEDs for every person on the earth. In our daily life, there are many articles using LEDs. Mobile phones generally contain 5 or 10 LEDs and televisions contain LEDs numbering up to the hundreds, LED consumption is clearly large. And GaN LEDs account for 85% of total revenues in the LED industry. The GaN LED market is part of the total global LED market,...

Traditionally Gallium Nitride (GaN) LED devices are produced on either sapphire or silicon carbide (SiC) substrates, due to the good crystal lattice matching between the materials and the GaN, with typically 2” or 4” diameter material being used. Significant effort is being made to grow GaN on ubiquitous larger diameter (6” or greater) silicon wafers, a substrate that offers significant substrate cost reduction, together with the ability to process in automated IC production lines. Reasonable estimates are that potential savings on the order of 80% over tr...

AIXTRON SE today announced a new MOCVD system order from existing customer Jilin University China. The contract is for one CCS reactor in a 3x2-inch wafer configuration, which will be dedicated to the growth of gallium nitride materials for UV and white LEDs. One of AIXTRON’s local support teams has installed and commissioned the new reactor in a state-of-the-art clean-room facility at Jilin University in Changchun, China. Dr. Zhang of the Jilin University, State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, comments, “We alre...

It was just a few days ago when Japan-based LED maker, Toyota Gosei Co., Ltd., announced its plan to manufacture new LED products using gallium nitride substrates as base components. Measuring up to several hundred µms in thickness, these essential materials, once properly assembled with 1mmx1mm LED chips, provide potential brightness of up to 400 lumens, approximately three times the amount delivered by LEDs fabricated on sapphire substrates. As has been the case with the 8-inch, silicon-based wafer level packaging technology introduced a few years earlier, it is b...

AIXTRON AG today announced a new order for one Close Coupled Showerhead® GaN based LED MOCVD system from Meijo University, in Nagoya, an established AIXTRON customer in Japan. The order was received earlier this year and the system will be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2010 in a 3x2-inch wafer configuration.The local AIXTRON support team will commission the new reactor at Meijo University.

AIXTRON AG announced today a new order for six CRIUS II 55x2-inch configuration deposition systems from Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics Co., Ltd., ‘SILAN’. The Hangzhou, PR China based company, placed the order in the second quarter of 2010 and will take delivery of the systems over the fourth quarter 2010 to first quarter 2011 period. The systems will be used for the volume production of GaN ultra-high brightness (UHB) blue/green LEDs.

Ostendo Technologies Inc. and Technologies and Devices International, Inc. (TDI), part of the Oxford Instruments Group, announce their joint development on Semi-Polar (11-22) GaN layer on sapphire substrate wafers is now available.

AIXTRON AG today announced an order from its long-time customer, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) located in Freiburg, Germany. IAF has ordered one AIX 2800G4 HT, 11x4 inch MOCVD tool which it will be using for GaN on SiC for high power, high frequency applications to enable commercialization of GaN devices in the near future. The IAF placed its order in the fourth quarter of 2009 and AIXTRON’s support team will install and commission the new reactor at their laboratory in the third quarter of 2010.

Veeco introduces the TurboDisc® K465i™ gallium nitride (GaN) Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) System for the production of high-brightness light-emitting diodes (HB LEDs). Veeco’s industry-leading beta site customers rapidly qualified the K465i for volume production, and the...

Yasufumi Fujiwara, professor of Osaka University in Japan, has recently created a prototype red LED element by using gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor. Though blue and green LED elements using GaN semiconductor have already been commercialized, this is the first time that a red LED element has been prototyped by using GaN semiconductor, Fujiwara said.

AIXTRON AG reported that in the fourth quarter 2008 the National Taiwan University (NTU) of Taiwan ordered one Close Coupled Showerhead 3x2" wafer Research Platform MOCVD system for research and development on GaN and related materials and devices and it will be delivered in the third quarter 2009.  

Lighting Fair 2009 hold a seminar titled "LED and organic EL pave the road to the future of illumination". The panel discussion was participated by Shuji Nakamura, a professor of the University of California at Santa Barbara, a developer of blue LED and a leader in the research of GaN-based light-emitting element and Junji Kido, who leads the research of the organic EL as a professor of Yamagata University Graduate School of Science and Engineering.

At the International Nanotechnology Exhibition & Conference (nano tech 2009), Toshiba Corp showcased a near-ultraviolet LED that is being developed for use in next-generation LED lighting. The company says the LED features a high external quantum efficiency of 36% and an emission wavelength of 380nm band.

Recently, AIXTRON AG announced an order received in the second quarter 2008 for an MOCVD system from a new customer, Yangzhou Zhongke Semiconductor Lighting Center Co. Ltd. The Close Coupled Showerhead CRIUS system with 31x2" wafer configuration was delivered to Yangzhou Zhongke’s state of the art facility in the Yangzhou High-Tech Venture Services Center, PR China in the fourth quarter 2008. Its application will be for the development and volume production of UHB blue/green LEDs.

Recently, Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO) announced that LG Innotek Co., Inc. of Korea, has ordered an additional four TurboDisc® K465™ gallium nitride (GaN) Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) Systems for HB-LED production. The orders were received in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed and demonstrated a new polarization-matched LED. The new type of LED, developed in collaboration with Samsung Electro-Mechanics, exhibits an 18% increase in light output and a 22% increase in wall-plug efficiency, which essentially measures the amount of electricity the LED converts into light.

Gallium Nitride (GaN), a man-made semiconductor used to make LEDs, emits brilliant light but uses very little electricity. New GaN LED lighting has the potential to make LEDs a household fixture, but high production costs have made GaN lighting too expensive for wide spread use in homes and offices. However the Cambridge University based Centre for Gallium Nitride has developed a new way of making GaN which could produce LEDs for a tenth of current prices.

Energy efficient lighting pioneer BluGlass Ltd and Itochu Plastics Inc. (CIPS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese trading company Itochu Corp. have signed a sales and distribution agreement. That means CIPS has won the sole rights to market BluGlass’s gallium nitride (GaN)-based LED manufacturing technology in Japan.

AIXTRON AG, a leading provider of deposition equipment to the semiconductor industry, is pleased to announce an order for a MOCVD system from Showa Denko K.K., a Japan based leading manufacturer of Ultra-High-Brightness (UHB) LEDs received in the first quarter 2008.

RUSNANO, ONEXIM and the Ural Optical and Mechanical Plant (UOMP) establish the joint company to manufacture the new generation lighting products which based on the gallium nitride（GaN）semiconductor chips. The successful establishment of a new enterprise will allow to return one of the most promising projects developed by the Russian scientists back to Russia.

PhotonStar LED Ltd. and the University of Cambridge have won funding from the government’s Technology Strategy Board. Together they will undertake a collaborative programme of work entitled LED Lighting for the 21st Century (LL21C).

Recently, Aixtron announced an order from Formosa Epitaxy Inc. for further six CRIUS Close Coupled Showerhead MOCVD systems received in the first quarter of 2008. This order for our CRIUS CCS tools confirms the exceptional capabilities in the design and operation of these systems.Formosa Epitaxy Inc., one of Taiwan’s leading manufacturers of ultra high brightness LEDs, will use the systems for volume production of GaN-based UHB LEDs.