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Editorial: Out of The Blue Comes a Great Release
... Even though it's a bit self-serving, I have to publicly applaud one of the best company press releases I've seen in some time. Not just because it calls attention to our Blue 2004 meet in Taiwan which gets underway Monday, May 10th at the Ambassador Hotel in Hsinchu, but...
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Cree Continues to Meet the Demand for Thinner, Brighter Green LEDsMay 5, 2004...The most recent additions to Cree's considerable breadth and depth of blue
spectrum LEDs is their new green XT-290 LED and the XB-900 LED and both types
are geared to meet the continued need for thinner, brighter green devices. The
XT-290, offered in a 527nm version, has a typical radiant flux of 9mW at 20mA
and is the thinnest, brightest in its class with a typical forward voltage of
3.2V. It also consumes the least power of any Cree standard size green LED chip.
The XB-900 527nm version has a typical radiant flux of 30mW at 350mA, and the
XB-900 505nm version has a typical radiant flux of 45mW at 350mA. Key uses for
these products are white light applications using RGB technologies where discrete
red, green and blue LED's are combined to create white light, primarily for
traffic signals and signage. Production quantities from the Durham, North Carolina
USA blue spectrum leader are now available for both products. In announcing
the new line of greens, Mike Dunn, Vice President, Optoelectronics, stated,
"We continue to respond to our customers' requirements for thinner and
brighter LEDs with a lower forward voltage. These new products offer our customers
exciting opportunities to target new applications and greater penetration into
the white LED market." Company
news release Mike Dunn will be a panelist at our upcoming Blue
2004 Advanced LED and Laser Diode meet in Taiwan next week, where Chuck
Swoboda, President and CEO of Cree will be featured as our keynote speaker on
the opening day of the conference, at 5pm, Tuesday, May 11th. Crystal IS Awarded Follow-On SUVOS Contract from DARPA for AlN Substrate DevelopmentMay 5, 2004...Crystal IS Inc. of Watervliet, New York USA has received a one-year funding
extension from the USA's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to
further improve the company's native single crystal aluminum nitride (AlN) technology.
The $750,000 contract is part of DARPA's Semiconductor Ultraviolet Optical Sources
(SUVOS) program and its RF/Microwave/Millimeter-wave Technology program which
has direct applications to ultraviolet emitters and RF transistors. SUVOS is
managed by Dr. John Carrano and the RF/MMIC work is managed by Dr. Mark Rosker.
Monitor is John Blevins at AFRL at Wright-Patterson AFB.
“We are very pleased to receive DARPA’s continuing support of
our efforts to further improve the quality and availability of ultra-low dislocation
density native AlN substrates, which have the potential to enable critical advances
in multiple III-nitride device technologies of strategic national interest,
including high-power RF transistors and high-efficiency ultraviolet emitters,”
said Dr. Leo Schowalter, Crystal IS co-founder, president and CEO. Leo will
be speaking at our upcoming Blue 2004 conference in Taiwan next week. John Carrano
was a featured speaker at our original, Blue
2003 (pictured on the right, 3rd and last picutres) meet in Dallas last
June where he layed out the original USA government's plans for the SUVOS program
and provided a very well received progress report.
“DARPA’s support has been and continues to be critical in helping
transition native single-crystal AlN into a new platform technology which has
the potential to enable broad-based benefits. Like Si, GaAs, InP, and SiC before
it, native AlN will enable new semiconductor device developments of both military
and commercial importance,” added Dr. Jon Whitlock, Chief Technology
Officer for Crystal IS. Key features of AlN substrates are included in the company
news release.
May 5, 2004...Bill Kroll and Charlie Huang were two of nine recent inductees into the New
Jersey High Tech Hall of Fame. This is deemed a great honor in the USA's
East Coastal region. The state of New Jersey is where so many brilliant advanced
technology companies are based. Both industry leaders are familiar names around
compound semi circles. In December, Bill
Kroll added Chairman to his titles of President and CEO of Matheson Tri-Gas
(see Matheson
Tri-Gas release for details) and Charlie
Huang is co-founder of Anadigics where he continues to serve as Executive
Vice President and CTO (Anadigics
release). Bill's induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame was in the High
Tech Leaders category and Charlie's was in the new Researcher category.
When you view the New Jersey High Tech Hall of Fame website
where the announcement is posted, scroll down and note that Bill and Charlie
join an elite group of previous inductees, which includes Greg Olsen of Sensors
Unlimited, Ron Rosenzweig of Anadigics, and Reuben Richards of Emcore. Our heartiest
congratulations to Bill and Charlie. They have long been strong supporters of
the compound semi industry as a whole, and of our CompoundSemi Online
projects and activities in particular. All of these gentlemen are considered
great leaders and our entire industry is proud to see them honored by their
home state for their ongoing contributions. Gentex Tackles Driver Distraction and Ships White LED-Based Mirrors to HyundaiMay 1, 2004...One of the more creative systems integrators of white LED components is Gentex,
of Zeeland, Michigan USA, noted for their light dimming mirrors which are being
installed at a rapid rate in automobiles worldwide. The company pioneered the
application of GaN-based white LEDs, selected because the white LEDs provided
a cooler yet bright enough light base in a progressively more tightly packed
classic "black box" housing in the rear vision mirror mounts. Gentex
has also been an inspiration to creative use of white LED solid state lighting
solutions. Their latest contribution to the knowledge base is a highly readablearticle
(complete with cool pictures) that starts off..."Forget about
using cell phones, eating fast food, applying makeup or watching in-vehicle
entertainment systems. When it comes to driver distraction, the leading culprit
just may be old-fashioned rearview mirror glare." The article articulates
Gentex' ongoing market research whereby they surveyed 6,000 new car buyers and
found that nearly 80 percent of them agreed that glare from their interior rearview
mirror bothers them when driving at night. Similarly, 75 percent agreed that
glare from their exterior mirrors is bothersome, with nearly 70 percent classifying
the glare as "blinding."
"For a variety of reasons, there's more glare on the road today than
ever before," said Garth Deur, executive vice president for Gentex,
which supplies the worldwide automotive industry with automatic-dimming rearview
mirrors. "The higher-mounted headlights of trucks and SUVs, the new
high-intensity discharge lamps with the bluish hue, an aging population more
susceptible to glare -- for these and a variety of other reasons, the problem
of roadway glare is reaching epidemic proportions." This finding is
doubly important for the solid state LED lighting suppliers as we move into
LEDs into the headlight applications. But rearview mirror glare isn't the only
issue that Gentex addresses in the article. "What's really frightening,"
says Deur, "are the poor driving habits we're developing in order to
prevent glare from reaching our eyes." To avoid glare, most of us tilt
our head, squint or adjust our body position. However, it's frightening to say
that our research shows that 58 percent of those surveyed block glare with their
hand, 20 percent admit to having worn sunglasses at night, and more than 50
percent actually report tilting their exterior mirrors outward or downward to
prevent glare from reaching their eyes. "By now, most people know that
driving while using a cell phone can be risky, but I'm far more alarmed to learn
that a large number of us aren't even using our exterior rearview mirrors when
driving at night."
Despite shipping over 10 million auto-dimming mirrors to automakers last year,
Gentex estimates that just 15 percent of the light vehicles built worldwide
have interior auto-dimming mirrors, and just six percent are built with exterior
auto-dimming mirrors. So there's plenty of business still out there. The most
recent automobile to be put on the user list is Hyundai, which will be including
the Gentex auto-dimming mirrors with a built-in compass display in the new Hyundai
Tuscon which is a compact SUV that will soon be sold worldwide. "This
is the first time we've shipped compass mirrors to Korea," stated Gentex
Executive VP Garth Deur. "Hyundai continues to lead the way by introducing
new features to the Korean market." Company
news release
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The
McDonald Report
Commentary & Perspective...
Out of The Blue Comes a Great ReleaseMay 5, 2004...Even though it's a bit self-serving, I have to publicly applaud one of the
best company press releases I've seen in some time. Not just because it calls
attention to our Blue 2004 meet in Taiwan
which gets underway Monday, May 10th at the Ambassador Hotel in Hsinchu, but
because it's one of those prototype, ideally typical releases. The release was
issued by Kopin announcing that the head of their company, Dr. John C.C. Fan,
will be a featured speaker at the conference. The news release title is Kopin
CEO Featured Speaker at Blue 2004 Conference in Taiwan. It came as a complete
surprise to me and it warmed my heart to see it cloned all over the business
news sites on Tuesday. You can view it for a time over one of the most popular
portals, under this Yahoo
link and it's also on the Kopin website.
Would that every company in our field, the world over, learn to write releases
like that. It would make the lives of us editor types so much easier... and
more importantly, it would accomplish the goals of publicizing a company's activities
and increase their overall visibility in the market. And that is what a good
press release is supposed to do. Increase visibility and become incentive for
publications to pursue the story. Kopin's release pointed out the importance
of John Fan's talk, which is titled: "Heteroepitaxy to a Brighter World
- Past, Present and Future" and did the whole Who/What/When/Where/Why
that simplyhas to be included in any release and every news story. Usually,
the first four "Ws" are easy to state. It's often the "Why"
that gets tricky.
In this case, Kopin's inside PR person, Richard Sneider, and their PR agency
pro, Jeff Aubin of Beaupre & Co. clearly expressed that John Fan's presentation
will "explore lessons learned from developments in heteroepitaxy concepts
going back 25 years; apply them to gallium nitride (GaN), the material from
which blue LEDs and lasers are fabricated; and project the future direction
of these products." Nice. And a good release always has a quote from the
man (or woman) in charge. In this case it was an especially nice testimonial
on the importance of our meeting.
"This Blue 2004 conference is by and for visionaries in two of the
world's most exciting and fastest-growing blue technologies, LEDs and lasers.
Excellent material quality is a necessary requirement for high-performance LEDs
and lasers," Dr. Fan said. Then they bring home the message near and
dear to the company once again, which a super pro like John Fan certainly knows
how to do. "Heteroepitaxy is a critical science in advancing these devices.
We are looking forward to some inspiring and enlightening give and take."
The release ends with recounting the recent achievements by the company and
what sets their technology apart from the crowd.
And herein lies another important point, especially for those of you new to
doing press releases. It has an addendum titled "About Dr. John C. C. Fan"
which those of you attending his talk, but who may not know John personally
may find interesting. "Dr. Fan was raised in Hong Kong. He came to the
United States and earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from
the University of California, Berkeley, then master's and doctorate degrees
in applied physics from Harvard. From 1972 to 1985, Dr. Fan conducted research
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory on a variety
of semiconductor materials and device areas. He was in charge of the Electronic
Materials Group at Lincoln Laboratory when he left MIT in 1985 to start Kopin
Corporation, the leading provider of HBT transistor wafers and small-format
active-matrix liquid crystal displays for wireless communication and other portable
consumer appliances. Dr. Fan has authored over 170 publications, edited three
books and has over 50 issued patents."
So when you see him on Wednesday, May 12th, go up and shake John Fan's hand
and tell him "Hi From Jo Ann" and that you learned more about
him here, over CompoundSemi News. I wish I could be there in person to
see him again (it's been many years, and I became a fan of John Fan's way back
in 1985 when he founded Kopin) and I wish I could be there to see and meet all
of you who will be in attendance, but... somebody has to stay home and
hold down the fort. Have a great conference and, together, continue to do
great things!
If you have questions about the
solid state lighting and compound semiconductor industries or have news
or views to share, I'm Jo Ann McDonald, Editor of LIGHTimes and CompoundSemi News.
Feel free to contact me directly, anytime. 
My direct tel at the ranch is
+1-325-463-5345
From time to time Jo Ann may comment on companies in which she holds a
modest investment - be sure to read
her disclosure at some point in time... |
