SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH said on Wednesday (September 3, 2003) that it has introduced to the market blue 'thin-film' light emitting diodes (LEDs) that would enable the use of LEDs in vehicle headlights, amongst other applications.
Developed using InGaN technology the LEDs make it possible to extract up to 75 percent of the internally generated light from the chip, the company said.
Unlike standard blue LEDs, which are grown on SiC, the InGaN LEDs are grown on sapphire, with the substrate removed by a laser lift-off procedure.
The standard substrate material for blue LEDs based on InGaN is silicon carbide, with a typical substrate thickness of 250-microns, however the material is so chemically and mechanically stable that it cannot be removed, either by wet chemical processing or dry chemical plasma etching without also destroying the 5-micron thin InGaN epitaxial layer, the company said.
The alternative substrate, sapphire, causes distortions and defects during InGaN growth, which reduce luminous efficacy.
Osram Opto Semiconductors said it has tailored its epitaxial growth procedure for InGaN to the sapphire substrate and developed a removal method that uses pulsed ultra-violet laser light to lift the LEDs of the substrate and that the process scales up to industrial-scale production.
Prototypes of 5-mm radial LEDs achieve brightness values of up to 16-milliwatt for 460-nanometer blue LEDs at an operating current of 20-milliamps, Osram said.
Volume production of the blue thin-film LEDs is set to start in 2004.
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