Germany-based GaN (gallium nitride) epitaxial wafers manufacturer Azzurro Semiconductors invested EUR 14.5 million to build a new joint company, with expanding production ability for GaN-on-silicon epitaxial wafers.

Azzurro noted, the new company was planed to choose in Dresden. And the funding was supplied by new partners including Wellington Partners, Good Energies and Emerald Technology Ventures and former investor Cedrus Private Equity and IBG Innovationsfonds.

Recently, the LED industry used GaN but was mostly limited in small-diameter sapphire substrates. Azzurro could offer a platform technology for LED producers to process the wafers in standard silicon production facilities with high productivity, which could save substantial cost and maintained the same performance compared to the conventional technology.

A leader of the Azzurro said, it had taken them seven years to bring the core technology platform to commercialization readiness, and the basic technology came from invention by Aloys Krost and Armin Dadgar at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg in 1999-2006. Now, Azzurro had an exclusively transferred share on the invention.

Following this investment, Christian Reitberger (Wellington Partners), Frank Siebke (Good Energies) and Markus Moor (Emerald Technology Ventures) sould join the Supervisory Board of Azzurro Semiconductors. More in formation on the investment partners could be found in the company's press release.

A new partner of the company noted, they believed Azzurro’s believe that the time had come to build a high-volume GaN [on silicon] epiwafer foundry to enable industry-wide adoption, and in the future, they would support Azzurro built a world-class execution team to deliver on this promise.