We believe that a rash of recent stories, suggesting that Cambridge University researchers have solved all the barriers to low-cost LED lighting, are overblown. The hype being generated could have a damaging effect on the LED lighting industry.
Read the Opinion piece on the LEDs Magazine website and give us your comments.
Friday, January 30, 2009
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4 comments:
Yeah, this has been over-hyped by the Cambridge PR and in the UK papers. That said, we have seen some details of the latest results from the Cambridge team and they have certainly made some good progress, growing flat, uncracked 150mm epiwafer material in their lab.
They have also fabricated some pretty good devices in collaboration with QinetiQ, which at least shows some proof of concept regards manufacturing.
But of course it will be the transfer from current "hero" devices to volume production of low-cost chips that will be the key step - and that looks to be 3 or 4 years away, minimum.
So people shouldn't get carried away by the PR hype, but, equally, we feel that there is some real (long-term) promise in the GaN-on-silicon approach.
Good show on calling the latest Cambridge result what it is: hype. Many groups, from IBM to numerous university efforts, have worked on GaN-on-Si LEDs over the years with varying degrees of success. There are already commercial efforts trying to exploit the (potential) cost savings of using Si substrates... Azzurro Semiconductor in Germany comes to mind. So this appears to be yet another example of Colin Humphreys blowing his own horn and making a splash in the popular media.
Yes, I agree with Mike Hatcher, the GaN-Si technology is promising. We expect the Cambridge team to showcase their results in top scientific journals, and then we can make a comparision with current LED technology. Prof. Colin's calculation is all wrong as the LEDs won't be ten times cheaper even if they are grwon on silicon.
Any opinions about GaN-on-SOI substrates?
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