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Applied Materials to Enter MOCVD Market Soon to Supply LED Makers
LIGHTimes News Staff
May 18, 2010...Applied Materials is expected to enter MOCVD market as a new MOCVD equipment supplier as the company responds to soaring demand from consumers and OEMs for LED backlit TVs. Applied Materials may in fact be looking to produce an HPVE and MOCVD combined system.
The company has produced HPVE systems for some time. However in the company's first government contract, in late January Applied was awarded $3.9 million from the DOE through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to reduce the costs of LED manufacturing by improving manufacturing equipment and processes. A portion of this money, some estimate $2.4 million, will go towards producing a more cost effective MOCVD system for producing LEDs.
C.J. Muse, an analyst with Barclays Capital, in a report and an EETimes article
stated, "We believe, based on research on DOE’s LED related projects that AMAT may have gotten $2.4 million from the taxpayer in connection with development of an MOCVD solution over the next eight quarters through end of 2011, though we think that the final manufacturing is likely to be done in Singapore/ Taiwan.''
Muse added, ''On a larger scale, our checks suggest that Applied is working on a multichamber epi tool on the Centura platform, with one HVPE chamber and two MOCVD chambers, and with in-situ cleaning to speed up the cycle time,''
Muse said, ''It likely will use lamp heating for better temperature control for defining sharp interfaces and will be targeting a 2X improvement in uniformity, 50 percent reduction in cycle time, and a 50 percent improvement in quantum efficiency. The takeaway here is that the tool and the approach is still far from proven--but we will likely start to hear more on this front with the market focused on whether or not TSMC will actually place orders for the tool in the next 3-6 month timeframe,''
Atlantic City Casino Claims 'World's Largest Outdoor Video Display' with Covered 500 Ft. Tower
LIGHTimes News Staff
May 18, 2010...Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City is likely the largest outdoor video display. All four exterior walls of the 500 foot-tall tower are equipped with LEDs that combine to make a an enormous dynamic video display created by Specialized Productions Inc (SPI). SPI specializes in digital signage content creation, primarily for the casino and gaming industry, and in designing entire digital signage and audio/visual systems.
"You see it for miles," said Mike Tully, vice president of Specialized Productions Inc. (SPI), the company that designs most of the digital signage content for the Harrah’s building. "It’s almost like the old days when you used to have those searchlights in the sky and people would know ‘Hey, something interesting’s happening over there,’ but this is more dynamic."
The building’s LED system is run through a C-nario digital signage playback platform, Tully says, which converts the huge initial image files from SPI into six smaller light panel shows for the four exterior walls of the building.
The building itself becomes a digital signage installation promoting upcoming events at Harrah’s. It reportedly can be seen from as far away as the Atlantic City Expressway a mile or two away, according to Todd Rickenbach, national sales manager for SPI. Such extreme visibility is further proof, he says, that the possibilities of digital signage are effectively endless.
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Judge Rules on Motions in Rothschild Vrs. Cree Patent Lawsuit; Lawsuit to Go to Jury
LIGHTimes News Staff
May 14, 2010...Gertrude Neumark Rothschild previously filed a patent lawsuit
against Cree Inc. in the United States District court in District D of Massachusetts. Rothschild alleged that Cree violated its '618 Patent and '499 Patent.
The '618 Patent is entitled "Process for Doping Crystals of Wide Band Gap Semiconductors". The '499 Patent is entitled "Wide Band Gap Semiconductors Having Low Bipolar Resistivity and Method of Formation".
Cree has been one of the only major LED product companies that has not settled with Rothschild about these fundamental LED patents.
Cree filed a motion to dismiss for lack of standing based on the argument that Rothschild conceived of the invention while employed at Philips Lumileds Lighting Company L.L.C., making Philips the rightful owner of the patent. In a motion to dismiss, the court may look outside the pleadings to determine if jurisdictional facts exist.
Philips however previously settled with Rothschild. Under the terms of the settlement Philips agreed to abandoned and relinquished any claim to right, title, interest in or ownership of the [patents-in-suit]."
For this reason Cree's motion to dismiss was denied. Cree's motion for summary judgement of patent invalidity was also denied.
Rothschild made several motions for partial summary judgement about various assertions and claims of the patents. All of these were denied.
William G. Young, the district judge in the case in Massachusetts ordered the case to go before a jury.
In 20 of the 21 processes discussed in Cree's motion for summary judgement the Judge ruled that the GaN layer was epitaxially grown and therefore not a substrate. The key issue in the case may come down to whether the AlGaN layer falls within the definition of substrate. If the AlGaN Layer is ruled to be a substrate then Cree would likely be found to infringe Rothschild's patent. If not, there Cree would not be found to infringe Rothchild's patent.
There is no word yet on when the jury trial will commence.
NNCrystal US Corporation Agrees to Supply Quantum Dot Materials for Acuity Brands Lighting
LIGHTimes News Staff
May 13, 2010...NNCrystal US Corporation of Fayetteville, Arkansas, a maker of colloidal nanocrystal (quantum dot) materials that act as a light coverter, (Ref: Coverage) will soon be supplying them to Acuity Brands Lighting, Inc. for Acuity's LED lighting products. The companies announced Tuesday that they have signed a supply agreement.
"We are excited to secure Acuity Brands Lighting as an early customer of our Qshift technologies in their products. Their focus on delivering highly energy-efficient and innovative lighting solutions serves as key validation of our technology and its game-changing ability," said Dr. Suresh Sunderrajan, President of NNCrystal US Corporation.
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LED Lighting Looking Better at Lightfair
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
May 17, 2010...Lightfair, the USA's largest annual lighting-focused gathering, is always a good checkpoint for progress in the LED lighting front. There are never any real technological surprises, since progress in this field is fast-paced, but still incremental, as it is in any semiconductor-driven arena. In fact, if anyone is claiming something revolutionary, just plan to smile, nod and find someone who really knows about the technology to help debunk the over-zealous claims. But Lightfair does provide a realistic perspective when you see it all at once, and all in one place. Here are some highlights (likely part 1 of 2) that struck us during our wanderings.
Whose LEDs? Whose driver?... With solid state lighting providing a perfect opportunity for producing junk, vapor or smoke and mirrors (it's important that the two are combined for the most spectacular effect), the industry has done a good job of propagating the "Ten questions to ask your luminaire supplier" kind of message. Leading among those has been a consistent urging to ask who the LED supplier is. If you are starting with something that isn't "lighting capable" there is no way to compensate to save the overall system reliability or performance. As we've written recently, with the number of quality lighting-class LED suppliers currently out there, and the complete tools and data they are offering to help designers assess performance and reliability for their designs, LEDs aren't the weak link in the chain anymore. So where is the next progress point? Consensus seems to be that the drivers, including power supplies if needed for a particular design, are where we need to focus the next "What's inside?" line of questioning.
The call to action here was generated by a good talk with NXP Semiconductors, who took the technical innovation award from the IALD/IES judging committee. I was immediately struck with the question of whether a group of lighting experts were qualified to analyze the intricacies of a digital/analog power control device. As I was heading towards the high-horse, it occurred to me that a more valid question might be, "What did they think they saw that impressed a bunch of 'bulbheads' with a chip's technical innovation?" NXP was pretty sure that it came down to efficiency and dimming. Efficiency is a functional necessity, since the 2102 model is targeted towards the replacement lamp market, and any inefficiency becomes waste heat, and that's the last thing you need more of in an already constrained package. Dimming critical from the marketing side, since "LED lightbulb" buyers will largely expect their bulbs to be dimmable, and it's an area that continues to need work. NXP has done good work in both areas, with good efficiency and dimming down to 1% that is tuned to be linear to the eye, without pop-on. Based on data from the 10M+ units shipped for the 2101 predecessor, which handles up to 8W in a replacement bulb, and 15W for designs with more room, they're pegging the lifetime to be at least 75,000 hours at 150-degrees C (that be hot). The 2102 supports 15W/25W respecitively for the same applications, with a power factor of better than .9 so it won't be a hinderance to Energy Star designs. Sounds like one solution to that weak link.
If we're calling this Day 1 of the "whose driver" movement, we can't expect everyone to know the answer off the top of their head, so a little patience might be required while this catches some traction. If a luminaire or light-engine sales person doesn't know the answer, give them a chance to find out. Of course, there's that other detail of figuring out what the answer means. No sweat... that's the driver suppliers' task to start those marketing engines up to get us all educated on what we're looking for in a "lighting class" driver, and what the warning flags of shoddy solutions might be. (Gee, gives me an idea for some future commentaries... I love when that happens.) We'll also do our best to keep from steering this information car into the technical weeds, hopefully keeping it at a level useful to the luminaire folks and decision makers alike).
Here come the Japanese... Whoo-hoo! Last year's Lightfair was notable because "the big guys" in lighting showed up, including Philips newly acquired US brands, so the follow on to that story seems natural, it's time to shake some more stuff up. And shake it was. Japan (and Korea) are arriving to the party, and they aren't late. It probably hasn't escaped many peoples' notice that flat panel TVs, along with desktop monitors and laptop displays, are moving to LEDs. Some predictions are that here in 2010, LED backlighting will achieve nearly 100% market penetration on the new models of laptop computers, as it did a few years ago for PDAs and cell phones. For the TVs, the pace is somewhat slower, but no less impressive in scope, with predictions that the uptick in LED demand driven by the adoption will actually lead to a bit of a materials shortage for a few years starting in 2011/2012. (Not to worry, the market sees it coming, and the shortage could be brief, if it occurs at all, and will probably lead to an oversupply shortly thereafter... cycles anyone, cycles?).
So what's this mean? Well, flat panel suppliers have put 2 and 2 together and come up with the answer, "Let's get serious about building our own LEDs for this stuff, and since we're at it, how about we build them for the lighting market as well... And what the heck, let's build the lights too)." Oh my, that's a lot of volume capacity ramping up, and volume cut costs. If you can build your own LEDs (not for amateurs, and get excited about billion-dollar levels of infrastructure investment), you can sell LED lighting solutions at very competitive prices. Panasonic and Samsung have made their intentions known, including the January announcement of Samsung's strategic relationship wtih Acuity.
We had the chance to spend some time with both Toshiba and Sharp during the week, and it's clear that they are extremely serious. Sharp is imminent with its first US offerings, and has already shipped something around 1.5M LED "lightbulbs", A-lamp style, in Japan. They're bringing their consumer marketing focus to bear on the commercial/industrial targets, as well as planning to offer a range of luminaires, beyond just replacement lamps.
Between the two, Toshiba appears ahead in this race across the Pacific and is humbly boasting 32 replacement lamp product SKUs in stock today (that's a novel announcement... not smoke or mirrors, but showing the actual fire). Their approach is to tap into their existing US commercial/industrial infrastructure, Toshiba International Corporation (TIC) which has distribution and rep relationships through its variable speed motors (for HVAC systems) and other product lines. Lighting is new to this part of the corporation, but plenty of the new team has experience, and it brings a heck of a lot of manufacturing and logistic capabilities right out of the chute. Their also isn't a lack of corporate knowledge, with Toshiba bringing 120 years of lighting experience to the table (their first lighting products followed meetings with the Thomas Edison... no joke). They currently ship about $2B/year of lighting products, and are putting about 500,000 LED replacement lamps out the door monthly in Japan. This ought to be interesting.
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