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AkzoNobel go global with Trimethyl Gallium capacity
METALORGANIC plant in LaPorte Texas production capability will double during Summer 2010 in response to unprecedented LED demand.
Dutch firm AkzoNobel is a major producer of high-purity semiconductor grade indium, gallium, aluminum and zinc-based metalorganics. These are key materials used as precursors in the production of light emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells. The High Purity Metal Organic (HPMO) business which is part of the Functional Chemicals Business Unit has announced it intends to double capacity of it’s LaPorte Texan facility.
Owing to new applications in backlight units for computer screens and LED-TVs, the market for LEDs is booming. In addition, LED technology continues to make steady progress penetrating into general lighting and many other applications. With demand for Trimethyl Gallium (TMG) already exceeding the supply, Strategy Analytics recently reported manufacturers will need to
Plasmarons ‘give graphene unique properties’
PARTICLES found in graphene could hold the key to the material’s development as a basis for next- generation photonics research.
absorb a 20% price increase in the near term.
“This capacity expansion shows AkzoNobel’s commitment to the attractive and high growth LED and solar industry”, says Bob Margevich, Managing Director of Functional Chemicals. “This business also supports our efforts in sustainability, by focusing on applications that drive energy efficiency and lower energy usage, like LEDs and solar cells”.
LED explosion could go up in smoke
STRATEGY ANALYTICS report ,“ Materials Shortage to Restrict Rampant LED Market ”, says consumables and MOCVD equipment manufacturers will struggle to meet demands.
The market for high-brightness LEDs in LCD TV backlights will be restricted by a shortage of key semiconductor materials in the second half of 2010.
With demand for TMG already exceeding the supply, manufacturers will need to absorb a 20% price increase in the near term. A shortage of sapphire wafers is also likely in the second half of 2010.
The report outlines the challenges facing LED manufacturers in 2010, as supply constraints and increasing material prices serve to restrict the rapid market expansion. “Concerns have previously been raised over the ability of MOCVD equipment vendors to meet rapidly increasing demand,” noted Asif Anwar, Director of the GaAs and
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www.compoundsemiconductor.net June 2010
Compound Semiconductor Service at Strategy Analytics. “The concern for short supply of materials will create a bottleneck for LED market growth over the short term.”
Taiwanese LED manufacturers in particular need to adjust to the new reality of the supply chain. Historically, they have bargained for the price of these key materials. But the balance of power in the LED industry has changed. With competitors backed by massive corporations, such as Samsung and LG, these firms are much better positioned to absorb higher material costs and to guarantee their supply in a constrained market.
Steven Entwistle, VP of the Strategy Analytics Strategic Technologies Practice, added, “Capacity expansions already in progress should relieve these constraints by mid-2011. Until then, the average selling price of high-brightness LEDs based on GaN should hold up well.”
An international team of researchers led by Aaron Bostwick and Eli Rotenberg of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has unlocked some of the mysteries of the unique properties of graphene.
The team showed how plasmarons - a charge carrier coupled with a plasmon particle - could play an integral role in the development of super-fast computers using graphene for room-temperature applications in the future.
It revealed how the density of graphene’s electrical charge carriers can be easily influenced, thereby making it relatively straightforward to tune the electronic properties of graphene nanostructures.
The team revealed how the material has no band-gap and this could be one of the unique selling points for its use in next-generation electronics.
“On the usual band-gap diagram of neutral graphene, the filled valence band and the empty conduction band are shown as two cones, which meet at their tips at a point called the Dirac crossing,” Dr Bostwick commented.
As particles get close to the Dirac crossing they move as if they have no mass, travelling at a specific proportion of the speed of light. As a result, the introduction of photons could excite plasmon particles using external sources, thereby channelling the particles into specific conical bands - making the material easily manageable to meet the needs of computer development. Dr Rotenberg added that “one of the best ways to grow a flat sheet of graphene is by heating a crystal of silicon carbide (SiC) ... As the silicon recedes from the surface it leaves a single carbon layer”.
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