LED sapphire market into the new board

Recently, the global LED capacity into the rapid expansion period, is focused on the development of LED backlight, LED lighting market, due to the LED upstream and downstream production capacity to expand the wave. In this, LED sapphire substrate related industries, is the most relevant LED epitaxial industry upstream industry, sapphire is one of the most important materials of LED epitaxy, the development and trend of related equipment manufacturers, is also very attention and concern in the market. LEDinside day before the visit to the United States GT Advanced Technologies Inc. (very advanced, the company formerly known as GT Solar) sapphire material and equipment department vice president and general manager of Cheryl Diuguid lady, by her to share information and experience LED sapphire material and equipment market talk.

Dual role provides LED sapphire market momentum

Cheryl Diuguid has a wealth of experience in the chemical, science and technology industry, is currently responsible for GT Advanced Technologies sapphire material and sapphire equipment, the focus is on the development of the Asian market. The company cut sapphire equipment market, she stressed that GT Advanced Technologies has acquired quite on sapphire material and equipment manufacturers in the field of Crystal, Systems, Inc., and incorporated into the GTAT of the time, it has provided sapphire for more than 40 years for the LED industry, there is considerable experience. Not only the supply of sapphire material, but also provides a sapphire furnace, is also a dual role of materials and equipment manufacturers.

GT Advanced Technologies is currently the sapphire production equipment, product positioning not only so in high scale manufacturers, the company in the United States, Massachusetts, Salem (Salem) to set up a factory, it is a good case to rapidly enhance the capacity and improve the quality of, for from the autumn of 2010 expansion plan, can improve the capacity of the factory 3 times the original, a total cost of $27 million, is available to the industry of high quality sapphire material, sapphire crystal with a large and make a reasonable price to supply the market.

Strict measurement standards and production quality

The quality aspect, she also linked to that data to prove, recently, GT Advanced announced the Technologies published by the third party on the LED sapphire substrate case study, this article entitled "production problems: the impact of sapphire material quality on LED wafer process report shows the sapphire material quality, does have a direct effect on LED wafer yield. Due to a blind test, the sensitivity is very high, including the wafer geometry parameters (surface roughness, total thickness variation, curvature and radian) and wafer scrap rate are the indicators of evaluation.

The report pointed out that the use of GT ASF method, KY method and HEM method than competitors, on average RA, average Warp, TTV, Bow, have better performance, the company is using the actual output examples to prove the status of material and equipment quality is relatively good. ASF method of sapphire production technology, the wafer loss rate of about 2.4%, better than the competitors of 6% and 6.9%.

In addition, Cheryl Diuguid also cited a very important example of a new Sapphire equipment as an example, the ASF 100 than ASF 85 more capacity, at the same time had increased in sapphire purity, yield and quality, for example to her previously purchased the company ASF series of manufacturers, are satisfied to upgrade and expand the design of the production capacity, so that they have the flexibility of deployment capacity. With the new OHT test technique, we can solve the problems such as bubble, twin, low angle grain boundary and so on.

LED sapphire price decline will expand the penetration of LED applications

Cheryl Diuguid predicts that in 2012, LED used sapphire prices will continue to decline, the market makers will have access to materials, substrate and lower cost, which will help to expand and LED penetration of LED lighting market.

She also stressed that the company sold sapphire substrate design, mainly to large customers vector, which will have a better economic scale. The company also deployed enough technical support team to cope with the needs of manufacturers in Asia, and training center, complete equipment operation training Asian manufacturers, and work diligently to quantify the relevant process.