Stocks of Taiwanese pattern sapphire substrate (PSS) providers, including Crystalwise, Rigitech Microelectronics, and Acme Electronics, lately witness a noticeable hike.

Following the expansion of LED chips and packaging industry, pattern sapphire substrate (PSS) manufacturer  Sinopatt Technology successfully scales up production capacity by offering stable technology, improvement in equipment and superior inventory turnover for costs control and operating competence. Currently, Sinopatt is the largest PSS manufacturer in the market. LEDinside interviewed with Kai Kang, President of Sinopatt about the opportunities and challenges in LED and sapphire industries.

Korea’s LED industry took off at a much later date than Japan or Taiwan, in fact it developed at around the same time as China, but has advanced at an accelerated rate. However, the country’s LED industry plummeted much sharply compared to Japan, China and Taiwan. The Korean LED industry development occurred in three phases the first was started by upstream LED manufacturers EE coined the “double E era”, followed by Samsung and LG’s entry during the peak of the Solid State Lighting (SSL) phase, followed by large scale withdraw from the market, in response to emerging Chinese LED industry.

Rubicon Technology (Rubicon), a leading provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, semiconductor, and optical industries, today reported financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2015 and announced the signing of a resource sharing agreement with another sapphire polisher aimed at more rapidly reducing polishing costs.

Rubicon Technology, a leading provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, semiconductor, and optical industries, today reported financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2015.

Rubicon Technology, a leading provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, semiconductor, and optical markets, today announced that it will showcase large-diameter patterned sapphire substrates (PSS) as well as its line of 4” and 6”polished sapphire wafers for the LED industry at LED Taiwan 2015. The event will be held at TWTC Nangang Exhibit Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, March 25-28, 2015. Rubicon will exhibit its line of sapphire products in Booth #N0326 & N0328.

Following listing on the Taiwan bourse on Dec. 19, 2014, leading sapphire manufacturer Phecda Technology announced its ambition of becoming one of the world’s top three Patterned Sapphire Substrate (PSS) supplier, according to a report by China Times.

“LED industry inventory level adjustments hit a peak in July,” a cnYes.com report quoted Epistar Chairman B.J. Lee. Market insiders’ project LED lighting PSS manufacturers Crystalwise Technology, Rigidtech and Aceplux Optotech. The market projects revenues in September and October will be unable to keep up high growth, and the market will be stagnant in third quarter.

Rubicon Technology, a leading provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, semiconductor, and optical industries, reported financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2014.

Increasingly market popularity for Patterned Sapphire Substrate (PSS) has led to Aceplux Optotech to increase capital by NT $297 million (US $9.90 million), according to a Money DJ report.

Strong LED market demands this year have led to patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) manufacturers expanded production capacity, according to “2014 Global Sapphire Substrate Market Report” by LEDinside, a LED research division of TrendForce. The 4-inch PSS market current supply shortage situation was mostly caused by Taiwanese and Chinese LED chip manufacturers introduction of large volume PSS into products, and manufacturers shift towards 4-inch PSS production. However, since manufacturers are expected to expand PSS production by the end of the year, tightened market supply conditions are expected to ease. 

Sapphire substrate related manufacturers are unable to meet increasing demands as the LED lighting industry enters peak season and Apple prepares to launch the new iPhone 6. Prices for upstream ingot and downstream substrate increased in 3Q14, with ingot prices up 5-10 percent. Rise in price has driven up business performance for sapphire substrate related manufacturers.

Apple’s recent interest in sapphire substrate has got the industry talking as to what future Apple product will use the material. Long since used in LED lighting applications and handheld devices, sapphire substrate will soon be the spotlight in the industry once Apple’s Arizona factory is up and running. 

HC SemiTek’s production capacity for patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) has reached 10,000 pieces per month with a self-supply rate of more than 50 percent, said Secretary of the Board Yeh Aimin on April 24 2014. 

Martini Tech has started to offer its customers a new GaN deposition service on sapphire substrates by MOCVD (metalorganic chemical vapour deposition) for LED (light emitting diode) applications.

Oji Holdings Corporation has established the fabrication technology of patterned sapphire substrates (PSS) for LEDs which improves the performance of front luminance of LEDs by more than double compared to that of LEDs with non-structured sapphire substrate, by applying the technique of precise coating with fine particles.

Four major phenomena occurred simultaneously in the sapphire market leading to global supply shortage for patterned sapphire substrate (PSS), according to Chinese-language Economic Daily News.

LED upstream key material PSS is in short supply with demands unable to be met. With supply unable to meet demands from LED manufacturers last year, production capacity is lacking by 50 percent, according to Economic Daily News. This had lead to a rise in price of around 5 percent for sapphire ingot, polished wafers, and PSS in March. Manufacturers including Crystalwise, Ridgetech, Aceplux Optotech, and Crystal Applied Technology are anticipated to benefit. PSS industry insiders are optimistic towards March operations.

In the next years, the use of PSS will further increase due to its high light extraction efficiency. Following this trend, LayTec‘s in-situ metrology software EpiNet 2 can be individually customized for various kinds of PSS. Our users can expand the substrate database by themselves. LayTec‘s Calibration Manual explains how to measure PSS reflectance in different pockets in one single calibration run. If required, LayTec also offers related customer trainings. Once the initial reflectance values of the PSS substrates are uploaded, the operator can choose the needed substrate in the RunType‘s Material Spec window (Fig. 1). As a result, all PSS wafers can be monitored with the same accuracy as standard sapphire substrates.