policy effects can create great opportunities as well as great challenges

The future trend of lighting energy lies in LED combined with solar energy. Except for common household lighting, LEDs are being applied in many different areas, such as automobile headlights and daytime running lights. SeekIC will make further developments and increase market shares in the LED field. For SeekIC and LED manufacturers, policy effects can create great opportunities as well as great challenges.

Toshiba Corporation will begin mass production of white LEDs on 200mm silicon wafers this month based on technology that it licensed and developed with Californian firm Bridgelux.Deployment of Toshiba and Bridgelux’s gallium nitride-on-silicon (GaN-on-Si) technology to produce LED chips, has allowed Toshiba to replace sapphire substrates and produce the chips on a more cost-competitive silicon substrate.

Production of LED chips is typically done on two to four-inch wafers with an expensive sapphire substrate but Toshiba and Bridgelux have developed a process for manufacturing gallium nitride LEDs on 200mm silicon wafers, which Toshiba has brought to its new production line at Kaga Toshiba Electronics Corporation, a discrete products factory in northern Japan.