As the LED backlight market entered a plateau period, the lighting market becomes the major battlefield for the global LED makers to compete in. Given the fierce price competition, a number of LED manufacturers have shifted their focus to LED specialty lighting, plant lighting and medical lighting in seek of higher profits.

With its vertical LED structure technology, American LED epitaxy manufacturer SemiLEDs developed UV LEDs of the wavelength range below 385nm. Additionally, the company optimized LEDs’ curing characteristics and developed a curing lighting source for equipment of assorted sectors, including panel, touch panel, semi-conductor, solar, camera lens for mobile phones and industrial printing equipment.

Currently, most related equipment incorporates UV mercury lights as the curing light sources, which have issues such as short lifespan, high thermal conductivity and ultra-red rays and low efficiency. For this reason, SemiLEDs expects LEDs to replace UV mercury lights in the future. The company developed UV LEDs with the vertical LED structure technology and successfully made its way into the panel and semi-conductor equipment markets.

Certain Taiwanese LED epitaxy makers, including Formosa Epitaxy Inc., Tekcore, Genesis Photonics Inc. and Huga Optotech Inc., have a head start on others in terms of UV LED production, although the development is still in the early stages.