Sapphire substrate material or the next bottleneck in the development of the industry

LED application market expansion, in addition to metal organic chemical vapor phase epitaxy (MOCVD) machine in short supply, resulting in less than the capacity of the chip, the upstream chip material sapphire substrate is also out of stock. ISuppli warned that in 2010 the global supply of LED is in short supply, and at the end of the year may be a serious shortage of supply, unless such a strong demand for device capacity has been improved.

At present is a start supplier certification, in order to prevent the end of stock shock deepened, as end effect, estimation for TV backlight penetration of the impact is not big, but the chip production transfer, will reduce the supply for lighting applications.

In the past the key technology of sapphire substrate material master in the United States, Japan and Taiwan factory. The difficult manufacturers contend, although Taiwan Department of industry supply is not large, but the technical threshold of LED sapphire crystal industry the most upstream rod and high yield problems to be improved, and the manufacturer plant expansion time takes about half a year to 9 months special gas, more to up to 1 and a half years in LED application by the occasion, upstream material shortage emerges tide, plus the LED MOCVD machine factory output speed is limited, LED industry estimates, the current capacity and order upstream chip gap has reached more than 1 times.

2009 LED total consumption of 63 billion, higher than in 2008 when the 57 billion. Due to the sharp rise in consumption last year, the overall LED consumption dangerously approaching the overall capacity of the entire industry - 75 billion, indicating that many LED manufacturers capacity utilization is close to 100%, demand is clearly beyond the supply.

The following figure shows the company's iSuppli global LED market forecast for 2006-2013.

LED production of sapphire substrate required to supply a bottleneck, fear will hinder the growth of the LED industry. The financial services industry analyst CanaccordAdams's DOS warning, sapphire serious shortage, to meet the needs of LED, sapphire substrate production capacity must be two to three times the rate of expansion, but also depend on the LED market. Seven months, rising demand has pushed up the price of sapphire by 50%, but he expects no new production lines will start before 2011. Because the sapphire substrate industry is still waiting to see whether the growth in demand, capacity to meet the needs of one to two years. In addition, LED industry requires greater sapphire substrate wafers, but also increase production difficulties.

Due to the shortage of LED, some companies are considering reducing its shipments of electronic products as LED backlight material. Weissman financial industry sapphire substrate Rubicon (BillWeissman) said that this year the company estimates the sapphire substrate prices will rise 15%. but Weissman also pointed out that the sapphire substrate wafer LED accounted for only 8% of the raw materials, the terminal price should not significantly affect LED.