A new facility for GaN, the key material needed to make LEDs, has set up in Cambridge, enabling researchers to expand and accelerate their pioneering work in the field. GaN-based LEDs are already used in traffic lights, bicycle lights, televisions, computer screens, car headlamps and other devices, but they are too expensive to be used widely in homes and offices.The main reason for this is that they are normally grown on expensive substrates, which pushes up the price of LED lightbulbs.The new GaN growth reactor at Cambridge will allow researchers to further improve a...

Epistar and Azzurro have jointly made breakthroughs on developing GaN-on-silicon based LEDs utilising Epistar’s HB LED structures and Azzurro’s technology for 150mm GaN-on-silicon in just 4 months. The firms transferred Epistar’s existing LED structures built on sapphire to the GaN-on-silicon material system, marking GaN-on-silicon one step further towards implementation in mass production. GaN-on-silicon growth is often associated with many technological challenges. But the use of templates with unique strain‐engineering technology from A...