LEDs ♦ news digest
(LEDs, LDs, UV detectors) and high-temperature electronics devices.
The field of III-N semiconductors has shown intensive patenting activity since the early 1990s, with a substantial increase during the past decade.
Today, there are more than 27,000 patent families filed relating to this technology. The most active companies are Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung, Sumitomo and Hitachi. The patents related to LED technology account for more than 40 percent of filings, followed by those related to GaN substrates (5 percent) and RF & Advanced Electronics of less than 5 percent.
This is according to Research and Markets’ report, “III- Nitrides 2012-2013 Patent Landscape.”
More than 1,570 new patent families were published between early April 2012 and late March 2013. They were filed by about 350 patent applicants mainly located in Japan, Korea, USA and China.
The main patent applicants are Sumitomo, Toshiba, Samsung, Sharp and Mitsubishi which represent together almost 25 percent of the patents published in the last 12 months.
The academic organisations account for almost 15 percent of new patent filings and are mainly located in China.
The data set considered in the report was segmented by the type of application (Substrates, Epi-wafers, LED & Laser, Power Devices, RF & Advanced Electronics, Photovoltaics, Sensors-Detectors-MEMS).
About 45 percent of new patent families published the last 12 months are related to LED technology. These were mainly filed by Toshiba, LG and Samsung, while Chinese companies are increasing their patent activity (Tongfang, Sanan Optoelectronics).
The patents claiming an invention related to III-N Substrates and Power Devices represent 20 percent and 14 percent of new filings respectively. The patents dedicated to Substrate technology were mainly filed by Sumitomo, Hitachi and Mitsubishi, while University of California and Soitec filed 15 and 8 new patents respectively.
The patents dedicated to Power Devices were mainly filed by Advanced Power Device Research Association, Samsung and Sumitomo and the patent filings remain dominated by Japanese companies.
Numerous patent applications published this year are offered for sale or for license. This year, the most
relevant offers are the ones from the University of California (e.g. Ammonothermal growth technique, CAVET for High Power Application, Defect reduction of semi-polar III-N, GaN substrates and III-N tandem solar cells.
LEDs and power transistors share a GaN-on-sapphire chip
Scientists have demonstrated what they claim is the first monolithic integration of an LED and High-Electron- Mobility Transistor (HEMT) on a single gallium nitride chip
Researchers from the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Centre at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have successfully integrated an LED and a power transistor on the same GaN chip.
This innovation could open the door to a new generation of LED technology that is less expensive to manufacture, significantly more efficient, and which enables new functionalities and applications far beyond illumination.
At the heart of today’s LED lighting systems are chips made from GaN, a semiconductor material. For the LED to function, many external components - such as inductors, capacitors, silicon interconnects, and wires - must be installed on or integrated into the chip.
The large size of the chip, with all of these necessary components, complicates the design and performance of LED lighting products. Additionally, the process of assembling these complex LED lighting systems can be slow, manually intensive, and expensive.
In a new study led by T. Paul Chow, professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) at Rensselaer, the researchers sought to solve this challenge by developing a chip with components all made from GaN.
This type of monolithically integrated chip simplifies LED device manufacturing, with fewer assembly steps and less required automation. What’s more, LED devices made with monolithically integrated chips will have fewer parts to malfunction, higher energy efficiency and cost effectiveness, and greater lighting design flexibility.
Chow and the research team grew a GaN LED structure directly on top of a GaN high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) structure. They used several basic techniques to interconnect the two regions, creating what they are calling the first monolithic integration of a HEMT and an
July 2013
www.compoundsemiconductor.net 77
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