Canadian firm Meaglow has made a breakthrough on a low temperature Migration Enhanced Afterglow film growth technique to produce a thick InGaN layer with strong yellow emission, for increasing the efficiency and lowering production costs of green LEDs and laser diodes.

It is looking for collaboration opportunities to enhance the material properties required by industry for lighting, display, medical, and military applications and other uses.

Meaglow's Chief Scientist K. Scott Butcher, says, "It's the brightest p-n junction I've ever seen in my life, and its right in the green gap."

The green gap (540-610nm) is a major obstacle in the development of high-efficiency solid state lighting applications. It's well known that LEDs produced in the green region, between red and blue, have rapidly declining efficiency.

Green and yellow in the middle of the colour spectrum, known as the "green gap", is a section of the light spectrum where devices made from either nitride or phosphide are inefficient and difficult to fabricate.

Meaglow says its reactor overcomes these difficulties by utilising its patent pending hollow cathode and low temperature growth process which is capable of growing the volatile compound of indium required to make green and yellow diodes.
Having a nitride device that emits strongly in the yellow is a monumental step forward for low temperature InGaN growth.

Meaglow also says the quality of InGaN produced by its technique is pioneering the industry. Results for this test device were presented to scientists in the nitride semiconductor research community at the recent ISSLED2012 conference held in Berlin, Germany.

The firm is now focused on commercialising its InGaN technology, and is seeking for partners interested in creating next generation devices using the thick InGaN template layers.