(iTers News) - Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. of Korea, LED chip and package maker, breaks through what’s referred to as the LED chip industry’s toughest technology challenge, blazing a trail to commercial availability of the world’s first nPola LED chip.

Called after its non-polarization characteristics, the nPola LED chip is a new breed of LED chip, which can emit light 5 times as brightly as conventional LED chips.

The five-fold jump in the brightness promises not only to speed up the adoption of LED chips into lighting solution market, but also open up new market opportunities in nascent, but potentially huge OELD market.



Yet, the nPola LED chip commercial availability is yet untested and unproven on a mass-production scale, throwing its productivity and price affordability in  question.

LED lighting solution market is a last resort where LED chip and package makers and LED lighting equipment makers alike are pinning their future on. That's because the market for LED backlight units, or  BLUs  for us in LCD TVs gets so matured that it leaves little room for further expansion.

So far, LED BLUs has been the largest consumption market of LED chips.

Between 2010 and 2011, LED chip makers across the world had gone on a spending spree to expand their fabrication capacity on hopes that soaring demand from LED BLU and lighting bulb and tube markets would boost shipments of LCD chips.

Their hope proved elusive, however, as matured LCD TV markets has failed to spur demand for LED BLUs.

The emergence of disruptive technology played a havoc, too.

Rows and columns of  packaged LED chips  were usually  put behind a matrix of of liquid crystal cells and color filters in what's referred to as direct LED backlight unit system to shed light through the cell. Yet  edge-lit LED lighting source technology had rapidly emerged as a cheaper and cost -effective alternative to direct LED BLU system, as it  required 10 times fewer number of LED chips than direct BLUs.

To make matters worse, the penetration of LED chips into lighting solution market has slowed down, because LED lighting solutions are still far costlier.

Cost still in question 

According to Seoul Semiconductor, nPola LED chips can shed 500 lumen of light per watt, 5 times as much as a normal LED chip, which emit 100 lumens of light.

The 5 times shinier nPola LED chips will open the way for LED lighting solution makers to build a LED light bulb, or tube with far less number of LED chips, resulting in great reductions in costs and heat emissions.

To build a 1,100 lumen LED bulb for home use, which sell for 29,900 Korean won (approximately US$25), for example, 12 normal LED chips of 1 watt are need. Yet, no more than three 3 nPola LED chips of one watt are sufficient to build a 1,500 lumen LED bulb.

At issue is unit price of the nPola LED chip. To etch and grow the n-pola LED on a sapphire substrate requires a GaN, or gallium nitride template, a GaN-deposited sapphire substrate.

Unlike a general sapphire substrate that creates a piezo-electric field along a C plane, or axis, which tilts and distorts electron flow, resulting in polarization effect and so loss in lumen per watt, the GaN template can grow and etch nPola LED chip along M and A plane.

The polarization effect is mainly blamed for heat generation, which deteriorates brightness and lifespan pf LED chips.

Yet, it is far costlier, with a 2-inch GaN template fetching for US$3,500 per piece. A comparable 2-inch normal sapphire just fetch for around US$16.



Game changer

Seoul Semiconductor said the company is working on a cheaper way-around to produce nPola LED chips at affordable price, yet.

J.H. Lee, CEO with Seoul Semiconductor said, “This nPola LED chip is sure to become a game changer of the global lighting solution market as well display market, as it will accelerate the time by one year which it takes for worldwide LED lighting solution market to hit critical mass.”

“General forecasts have it that LED lighting solutions would start to replace fluorescent tubes in high volume by 2014, but I predict 2013 will mark a turning-point, hitting a cross-over price point where LED solution match fluorescent lamps in price and then go lower.”

The applications don’t stop there. He predicts nPola LED chips would even replace OLEDs as far-crisper and thinner display technology. Volume Production of the nPola LED chips will start some in the second half, targeting to hit markets by year-end.

 

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