Venture capital help silicon based LED epitaxial wafer industrialization

Days ago, industry news, focus on the development and manufacture of silicon substrate GaN based high brightness LED (light emitting diode) front-end technology latticepower Jiangxi Co. Ltd., received $10 million in venture capital investment, the investment from Jinsha River venture investment fund and the United States Mayfield Fund and AsiaVest Partners. Mayfield the oldest risk investment institutions in the United States, established in 1936. In recent years, risk investment in our country LED epitaxial wafers and chips in terms of investment is almost blank, the United States Jinsha River investment Mayfield Fund and AsiaVest Partners to complete the latticepower investment, the development of China's semiconductor lighting industry is undoubtedly a good thing.

Market prospects

LED industry is a new industry in the world, with an annual growth rate of 30% - 50%, its rapid growth can be said to be amazing. According to a U.S. forecast shows that within 5 years the global LED market will grow from $3 billion 200 million in 2004 to $5 billion 600 million in 2008. From 2004 to 2008, the market value of high brightness LEDs or semiconductor based lamps will increase from $1 billion 600 million to $2 billion 640 million. Domestic LED industry is also in the stage of rapid development, the current investment in China's LED companies are gradually more.

LED lighting market in the face of good prospects and great temptation, the world is emerging market prospects for the LED industry, to seize the commanding heights of the market to fight a battle. Countries all over the world have developed corresponding national development plan. China also officially launched the national semiconductor lighting project in June 2003.

Right now, LED is the most widely used for mobile phone keys and LCD display background light. Secondly, it is used in automobile, building lighting and new traffic lights. It is estimated that this year, various types of new products used in high brightness LED sales will reach $4 billion to $5 billion, an important component of the value of $26 billion in the lighting industry. With the use of LED in the TV and even some areas of appliance products continue to promote, is expected in 2010 LED sales will increase to $10 billion.

In fact, in the field of LED industry, there are similar to Moore's law in the field of microelectronics. Agilent, a former technology scientist Roland Haitz predicted that the price of LED every 10 years will be the original 1/10, the performance is increased by 20 times, this prediction was later called the Haitz law industry. It is this prediction, to the future of the LED industry has brought unlimited prospects.

Jinsha River venture partner Pan Xiaofeng in an "China electronic newspaper" interview with reporters stressed that it is to see the LED industry a huge market demand and domestic breakthrough technology innovation, to make the Jinsha River business.

New technology route worth looking forward to

As a new and potential industry, LED lighting is being paid more and more attention by the whole world, and its development prospect is influenced by many factors. Due to the great role of patent technology in the development of LED and its unique patent distribution, patent transfer, licensing and disputes will greatly affect the future development of the LED industry. The core patent LED lighting technology is basically a few large companies of foreign control, such as Japan's Nichia, TOYOTA, Toshiba, Lumileds synthesis, American Cree, German Osram, etc.. These companies use their core patents, to take the horizontal (while entering a number of countries) and vertical (continuous improvement of the design, for subsequent applications) to expand the way in the world, the layout of a strict patent network. With the expansion of the domestic LED export scale, we do not rule out the trend of foreign companies to shift the focus of patent litigation to domestic enterprises.

At present, the Nanchang University has successfully developed the international leading level and independent intellectual property rights of the silicon substrate light-emitting diode materials and devices". The results have entered the implementation stage of industrialization, the establishment of the Nanchang crystal photoelectric (Jiangxi) Co., Ltd., to achieve a small batch production.

At present in the world, for the blue violet semiconductor lighting fluorescent powder to emit white light material of epitaxial films, with Nichia Corporation of Japan is represented in the growth of Gan on sapphire blue violet, by American CREE company is represented in silicon carbide grown on GaN Blue Violet, latticepower is one of the world. The number of growth of gallium nitride on silicon, in this regard, deputy general manager of Beijing Changjiang Zhiyuan Electronic Co., senior engineer Ding Chenglong believes that growth on silicon gallium nitride is a can easily avoid the arias, CREE and many other companies of the vast patent encirclement; second, this is to improve the conversion efficiency and reduce a new, to look forward to, have broad prospects for the cost of the road. Because this is a new technical route, so there are a lot of difficulties to overcome, there is a lot of work to do.

"We chose Jinsha River venture capital fund, AsiaVest and Mayfield as our preferred partners because they have technical experience, local industrial networks and access to global markets. These investors work closely with us for many years, for us to develop business plans for the healthy development of crystal photoelectric, to the world can give us a good help." Professor of Nanchang University, crystal energy, chief scientist at the light of the benefits in the China Electronics News reporter, said.

Crystal energy is a small number of Chinese companies in the country to complete the basic research and development and has complete intellectual property rights of Chinese companies, there is a unique global market demand. At present, we are helping to apply for patents in the field of photovoltaic energy, the next step is to promote the industrialization of the project