Middle and upper reaches of China's LED industry weakness

The world formed in Asia, North America, Europe's three largest regional center for the LED industry in Japan, TOYOTA, Nichia American Cree, Lumileds synthesis, Osram and the European patent for core technology competition. U.S. and Japanese companies in the epitaxial chip, chip technology, equipment has a monopoly advantage, European companies in the field of application of technology advantages.

From 1999 to 2009, in the United States to apply for 3312 patents related to LED, Japan ranked first, accounting for about $second, the United States accounted for 30%, accounting for China's Taiwan Province, a total of third, was $11%, or $50%.

Japan is the world's largest producer of LED industry, accounting for about 50% of the market share, its trend is almost a pointer to the LED industry. China's Taiwan LED industry revenues accounted for 17% of global revenue, second only to Japan, ahead of South Korea, Europe and the United states. Taiwan is the world's consumer electronics production base, but also the world's largest LED downstream packaging and midstream chip production. China's Taiwan region and the Mainland mainly focus on the development of packaging and assembly links, the output ranks first in the world, the output value of the world's second.

LED industry chain mainly includes four parts: LED epitaxial wafer growth, chip manufacturing, device packaging and product applications, in addition to supporting industries.

In the LED industry chain, LED epitaxial chips and chips accounted for about 70% of the industry's profits, LED packaging accounted for about 10-20%, while LED applications probably accounted for 10-20%. With it is that the LED industry chain from upstream to downstream industry barriers to entry gradually reduced.

The substrate materials used in the manufacture of LED chips are usually of high quality sapphire or silicon carbide, GaAs (Shen Huajia), which is the epitaxial growth of various kinds of composite semiconductors. At present, the growth of AlInGaP on GaAs substrate is a relatively mature technology, it is expected that the future GaAs substrate will be a reliable choice of substrate materials. Because of the good performance of the sapphire substrate on the large size substrate, with the continuous efforts of the manufacturers to the development of large size substrate technology, will gradually occupy a larger proportion.

Epitaxial wafer growth is the key technology of LED fabrication, and it has been widely used in metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). At present, the major manufacturers in the global MOCVD for AIXTRON of Germany and the United States VEECO company, the former accounted for 60%-70% share of the international market, which accounts for 30%-40%, Japan NipponSanso production equipment limited to domestic sales in japan.

After epitaxial growth, the middle reaches of the chip design and processing manufacturers of device structure and process design according to LED requirements, through the diffusion and epitaxial wafer metal coating, and lithography, heat treatment, metal electrode formed; the substrate thinning after polishing, cutting into small LED chip.

The chip package is about to be pasted on the chip and welded with the lead frame, which is encapsulated into various products through testing and sealing. White LED chips also need to be injected into the sealant to produce white phosphorus. In principle, the smaller the chip, the higher the technical difficulty of packaging.

After packaging, the product has been tested, sorted and assembled into the sub system for lighting equipment. Lighting equipment (such as signal lights, screens, commercial or civilian lighting equipment) in addition to the LED chip, but also other optical devices, LED drive circuit, etc.. The product is sold by the dealer, the lighting design engineer and the architect are designed to be used by the end user.

LED industry in the world has formed a complete industrial chain, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, a large number of enterprises, mainly in the substrate, epitaxial, chip and packaging areas. Has the strength to engage in the LED industry chain of the whole business of the company is less, mainly the United States, Japan and South Korea's leading enterprises.

In the domestic LED industry chain, the upstream epitaxial wafer and chip development is lagging behind the soft rib.

LED epitaxial wafer and chip on the technical requirements of high, domestic in these two areas with the international advanced level there is a gap. At present, the domestic epitaxial wafer and chip production is limited, engaged in the production of LED epitaxial wafer companies only about 10, LED chip manufacturers are not many. Domestic LED epitaxial materials, chips in the middle and low based, more than 80% power LED chips, devices rely on imports, epitaxial film production can only meet the packaging enterprises demand of 20%.

China's LED enterprises more than 3000, of which 70% concentrated in the downstream industry, LED packaging products have reached the world's first, technical level and product quality uneven. LED industry in the upper reaches of China caused atrophy, mainly due to downstream expansion is the current mainstream technology patent LED for control of the developed countries, the lack of independent intellectual property rights and core technology, enterprise development is facing patent risk increasing, backward production facilities and industrialization of scientific research is not smooth.