Reportedly, The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded another $14.8 million in funding for development projects aimed at advancing solid-state lighting technologies.

Major recipients of the new awards include Veeco, the India-headquartered manufacturing giant Moser Baer Technologies, Cree and Philips Lumileds.

Veeco will receive $4 million and its project focuses on the introduction of an aluminum nitride layer into the LED epiwafer structure, to act as a buffer between the light-emitting layers of the device and a silicon substrate.

Moser Baer will get $2.9 million and will focus on reducing the cost of making OLED lighting panels at the firm's pilot line in New York state, and will closely involve the key OLED materials developer Universal Display Corporation.

Both Veeco and Moser Baer are providing an additional $1 million of private funding towards the DOE projects.

In the other funded projects, Cree ($1.6 million) and Philips Lumileds ($2.0 million) will work on product development of more cost-effective high-performance devices, with the Philips subsidiary focused on high-voltage, low-current chips that should simplify driver IC requirements. Cree’s target will be to produce ultra-bright warm-white LED packages capable of 128 lm/W efficacy.

The awards have been made shortly after the DOE published the latest version of its technology roadmap for solid-state lighting. The updated document calls for LED lighting to reach a cost of just $2.20 per kilolumen by 2015 and $1 per kilolumen by 2020. That compares with the estimated 2010 figure of $18 per kilolumen, suggesting a similar magnitude of cost reduction indicated by Lumileds.