technology with a strong commercial focus. This year there was also a session dedicated to growth
developments in Asia with presentations focused on Taiwan, Korea and China. The conference was well
attended with 500 + attendees.
The highlight of the show from an imprint stand point was the general acceptance that photonic crystals (PC) will
be an important technology in high brightness LED's.
- US DOE showed PC pictures from Sandia and UCSB – “excellent new results”
- Flat panel backlights and projection display illuminator was identified as the “next volume application”
- Luminus Devices has devices designed into DMD and LCOS displays from 4 sources, more design wins
than has announced in the press. - IP review mentioned PC as a likely litigation area
A second imprint opportunity was described by Heptagon who showed diffractive and refractive optics in a SMD
package for beam shaping. They also described the possibility of overmoulding – direct fabrication of lens on
wafers.
Markets and business moves
- Chip value 20% of package. ASP of packaged devices 20 c.
- Packaged chip market is $4B, chips $0.8B. Packaged chips will be $8B in 2010
- Price pressure in mobile apps (cell phones) has kept the mobile market segment flat. Vertical integration
happening, Phillips move in acquiring all of Lumeleds seen as very significant. Phillips, Osram, and GE
gearing up for the change. GE appears to be the weakest. 45 % of world wide chips made in Taiwan.
DISPLAYS
Projection displays
LED’s are starting to be used as light sources in projectors because they are compact intense sources, have
greater color gamut, power efficient, l0 x greater life and can be switched so RGB sequential illumination can be
produced without a color wheel. Luminus Devices announcements of design wins using thier photonic crystal
based devices is a breakthrough event.
Several vendors have announced both micro-front projector and thin back projectors that use LED light sources.
Billboard displays
An electronic billboard was described by Vision Engineering that had very well designed system solutions for the
problems of color consistency new devices and changes in intensity over time. They buried a photodiode in each
RGB cell to provide lifetime monitoring. They used color mapping and manipulation of the relative RBG
intensities to correct for color variation at manufacture and over life. They also used the sensor to provide
environmental feedback. This suggests that controlled white from RGB grouping may be a very important long
term strategy. Also may provide basis for monitoring facility impacts. They also used a prism optic and a
diffractive optic to control the viewing angle from the display. These are all interesting applications for imprint.
General lighting
General purpose LED Lighting is not a question of invention, it’s a question cost, manufacturability and
distribution. Really significant national energy savings available. Costs need to come down a factor of 2. Color
consistency is a major problem so everyone bins for color. This is not compatible with the lowest cost
applications such as household which need the highest performance. The absence of standards was a
common theme. There is no accepted way to spec. LED performance
Due to the potential energy savings there are large nation programs in US Taiwan, Korea and China for general
lighting
NEXT
For more source information on each item go to References, or to the abstract book for the conference.
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