Solid State Lighting Design - News and Features for Solid State and LED Lighting in Architecture

May 19, 2003...Internationally acclaimed blue spectrum solid state lighting "breakthrough artist" Shuji Nakamura, will be among those presented Pioneer Awards at Blue 2003 - Behind the Hot Apps in Dallas, Texas USA. The three day Industry Review and Media Event will be held Wednesday through Friday, June 11-13 at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Dallas. The Pioneer Awards ceremony will be the highlight of Thursday evening's Celebration of The Blues, featuring the rock/blues performance band, Texas Wildfire. The event and the awards are being organized by CompoundSemi Online, the international online resource portal for the compound semiconductor industry.

Shuji Nakamura's blue spectrum pioneering status was originally achieved in the mid-1990s when in the employ of Nichia Corporation of Japan. He is now a USA professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). Professor Nakamura's dramatic contribution to solid state lighting produced record achievements that led to a dramatic surge in brightness levels, lifetimes, and performance for blue spectrum LEDs and laser diodes (LDs). These blue spectrum LED devices are quickly replacing traditional green, blue, violet, ultraviolet, and white light sources and blue lasers are already the key component in optimized, higher capacity DVDs and computer hard drives. White LED-based lighting is rapidly on the way to replacing the traditional Edison lightbulb. Professor Nakamura and UCSB colleague, Steve DenBaars, will be presenting their latest progress report on Friday, June 13th prior to a press conference for the recipients of CompoundSemi's Pioneer Awards.

The underlying semiconductor material responsible for these blue spectrum breakthroughs is a compound semiconductor called Gallium Nitride (GaN), a "wide bandgap" material noted for its benign effect on the environment and ability to produce robust, energy-saving devices and systems. The primary manufacturing process that turns GaN-bassed materials into blue spectrum light is called MOCVD (metalorganic chemical vapor deposition). The other four recipients of the CompoundSemi Pioneer Awards contributed significantly to GaN development and MOCVD technology over the past 20 years, helping lay the groundwork for exceptional artists like Shuji Nakamura. They include...

John Edmond, on behalf of the co-founders of Cree, Inc. of Durham North Carolina USA, will be presented a Pioneer Award for the insight and steadfast focus he and his team contributed to early stage blue LEDs and LDs. Founded in 1987, Cree was the first to identify the commercial applications and the company, which trades over the Nasdaq stock exchange (symbol: CREE), is regarded as one of the most successful and consistent semiconductor industry performers in the wide bandgap semiconductor field. The company is unique in that it concentrates its LED and LD work in just the blue spectrum and continues to pioneer new applications areas.

Norman Schumaker, founder of Emcore Corporation, which also trades over the Nasdaq (symbol: EMKR) is our third recipient of a CompoundSemi Pioneer Award. Dr. Schumaker is now President and CEO of Molecular Imprints, Inc., an innovative lithography equipment company based in Austin, Texas. In 1984, he set up the original Emcore company structure, harnessed the seed capital, and then collegues from Bell Labs combined their talents and designed the first commercial, open market MOCVD platform. The subsequent fierce international competition with German MOCVD maker, Aixtron AG, accelerated the manufacturing of high brightness LEDs and LDs, and Emcore and Aixtron platforms are now regarded as the basic standard needed for producing high volume GaN-based devices, worldwide, with an astonishingly large buildup of manufacturing capability currently underway in Asia.

Professor Michael Shur of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York, will be honored with a Pioneer Award at Blue 2003. Professor Shur is noted as one of the first Nitride scientists from Russia to emigrate to the USA at the height of the "Cold War." A noted industry historian, Professor Shur's GaN device modeling work is world renowned and he is the co-author of a new university text "Introduction to Solid State Lighting" a Wiley Interscience Publication. When it comes to solid state lighting, he literally "wrote the book."

A fifth and final Pioneer Award will be presented as a surprise to Blue 2003 attendees--and it will be a surprise to that recipient as well. The recipient is one of the featured speakers at the conference (reference the Blue 2003 updated agenda). Rest assured, that "mystery person's" consistent and thoughtful contributions helped fortify the compound semi blue spectrum community over the past 20 years, such that it has emerged as a definable, robust "industry" that well-deserves its current status as an "overnight success."

Members of the business and technology press, and industry analysts are invited to attend Blue 2003 with traditional press privileges, and to participate in media panels as part of the major presentations, and are invited to join in the Thursday evening festivities and Friday morning press conference. For press passes, contact CompoundSemi Online's business office at +1-512-261-9653 or simply register online off the Blue 2003 event homepage section: "for journalists."

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Pioneer Awards at Blue 2003 Include Shuji Nakamura