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OptoLum Ensures Stature in White LED Thermal Management with Second Key Patent
LIGHTimes Staff

November 21, 2004...Special Report on Strides in Thermal Management of LEDs: We're all getting more intelligent when it comes to using HB-LED technology, especially as they're applied as true high end solid state light sources. One of the aspects of intelligent LED applications in solid state lighting, which a powerful young Phoenix, Arizona USA-based startup called OptoLum appears to now control, is superior expertise regarding the thermal management of integrated LEDs into light fixtures and lamps, even LED packages. OptoLum, a systems/sub systems integrator of high end LEDs, such as Lumileds Luxeon line, holds the key "536 patent" on thermal management of white LED based light sources. OptoLum has recently been awarded a follow-on USA patent, #6,815,724 that extends their core patent to now include intelligent control and monitoring technology for LEDs utilizing heat sinks in both active and passive systems. (Ref: news release.) The 3 year old startup is already in production with a growing and impressive list of OEM and VARs manufacturing for them custom, thermally optimized, solid state lamps and light fixtures. In addition, OptoLum is actively reaching out to colleagues and competitors through licensing of their thermal management IP as a means of helping catapult the SSL industry toward more rapid prominence through white LED implementation. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members...

Cree Licenses Portfolio of AlN Bulk Growth IP to Crystal IS
CompoundSemi News Staff

November 23, 2004...Crystal IS Inc. of Watervliet, New York USA has been granted a patent license agreement by Cree Inc. of Durham, North Carolina USA that covers a portfolio of patents involving crystalline aluminum nitride (AlN) manufacturing technology. Crystal IS is a noted supplier of ultra-low defect density native aluminum nitride (AlN) single crystal substrates. Cree is the owner of extensive IP relating to just about everything to do with wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor technology, most notably SiC and the Group III Nitrides. The license to Crystal IS is "non-exclusive with most favored status," and the wording of such legal documents is critical. The topic of WBG semiconductor and the current business climate for that wide range of technologies will be the topic of our opening day of the annual CS Outlook conference, December 6th, in Dallas, Texas. Crystal IS Senior VP of Business Development and CMO, Keith Evans, is organizing the WBG Business Opportunities Workshop. Both Keith and Crystal IS founder, President and CEO, Leo Schowalter, will be attending the whole of CS Outlook, Dec. 6-8th.

Keith Evans, who has long been regarded as a key catalyst in the WBG arena, hailing originally from the US Air Force's prestigious Wright Labs, added in regarded to the Cree deal, "We are hopeful that our customers and potential new customers will see this agreement with Cree as an important step in our company’s growth – one which enhances our long term viability in the marketplace.” Keith's contributions to the WBG industry thus far are enormous, with a colorful career in senior management and top of the line strategic planning still ahead. We heartily encourage you to attend the CS Outlook conference, and especially Keith's WBG Business Opportunities Workshop so you can see for yourself what the latest trends in the WBG field really are, and to get to know Keith and his team of expert WBG workshop contributors better.

November 23, 2004...Packaged LED device manufacturer, Harvatek of Taiwan, has officially secured a license from Osram Opto of Germany for the packaging of white LEDs. Harvatek will continue to source its blue spectrum LED die from Cree Inc. of Durham, North Carolina USA, and the Osram license covers phosphor packaging of blue spectrum LED die, which, by the phosphor coatings, are made into white LEDs. According to Taiwan analysts, Harvatek will pay an upfront fee of NT $200m, with a variable 4-7% fee on related die sold and Harvatek expects to sell around 125-150KK/month heading into Q-1 of 2005. According to a DigiTimes report on Nov. 19th covering the news, the President of Harvatek, Billy Wang, said that the Osram licensing deal means that Harvatek will now be able to add two kinds of white-LED chips to its product lineup, and that "the white LED chip segment will become a major sales driving force for Harvatek over the next two years." Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members...

South Epitaxy Goes Public on the Taiwan Stock Exchange

November 23, 2004...South Epitaxy, a Taiwan based LED epiwafer and device manufacturer, officially goes public on Wednesday, Nov. 24th, on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. According to a DigiTimes report South Epitaxy expects to see a 20% growth in both sales and profits in 2005 and is voicing optimism about the anti-static LED and high-voltage LED markets which they are targeting. South Epitaxy's products are geared for handset-related applications, with sales from epiwafers for handset keypads reported to account for 33% of the company's total current sales, while sales of high-luminance ITO (indium-tin oxide) blue-LED chips for handset backlighting accounts for 39.6% of current sales.

Agilent Signs MOU to Explore Establishing Wireless R&D Center and HB-LED Manufacturing in Korea

November 23, 2004...According to a report in The Korean Times, Agilent Technologies of California USA intends to establish a research and development center in Korea aimed at studying wireless applications. Last Tuesday, a meeting between Korean Information-Communication Minister Chin Dae-je and Agilent's CEO, Edward W. Barnholt, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed that would establish the lab, which will serve as Agilent's Asia-Pacific regional hub for product development and regional technical support. "Depending on the Korean government's response, the final decision will be made on the wireless design center," said Mr. Barnholt said after attending a breakfast meeting with the Federation of Korean Industries. Included in the MOU were plans for Agilent to also investigate the commercial viability of building a high-brightness LED (light-emitting diode) manufacturing center in Kwangju, in Southern Korea. The MOU between the city of Kwangju and Agilent is evidently in line with the Korean government's "scheme of fostering the Kwangju region as the nation's cluster of optical industries."

Ahura's Three Miniature EC Lasers Leave Small Footprints

November 23, 2004...Ultra-compact optical systems innovator and startup, Ahura Corporation of Wilmington, Massachusetts USA has revealed details about their new lines of miniature high performance lasers for Raman Spectroscopy. Three miniature external cavity lasers were described, all three emphasizing high wavelength and power stability, high efficiency and especially small footprints. The ECL-LSS-785-325 is a UL qualified multimode laser that is already in mass production geared for portable applications, the ECL-LSS-0.05-785-325 is a higher resolution version with a typical FWHM line width of 0.03nm, and the ECL-LSS 0.05 785-100 SM is a high power single transverse mode laser featuring 100 mW of SM power. Ahura, which only recently came out of stealth mode (quietly spinning out of CoreTex), is already successfully selling lasers to a number of customers and was selected above other laser manufacturers for their ability to reliably manufacture high performance lasers in a small, low power consumption subsystem. Ahura occupies a 30,000 square foot development and manufacturing facility in Wilmington, MA. The startup is developing portable sensor technology based on their patented ‘Optical Engines’.

“Ahura’s approach is fundamentally different from other companies in the optical subsystems field” said CEO Dr. Daryoosh Vakhshoori. “Our ‘optical engine’ technology enables miniature high performance optical systems for a number of industries. We are confident that low cost, real-time, portable instruments will revolutionize data collection in the field as well as on the factory floor. Optical engines are the ‘microprocessors’ that enable this revolution. We will continue to push the technological envelop on product performance while moving quickly to transition novel designs into production.” Company news release

Two Broadband Organizations Merge to Form Boadband Services Forum

November 23, 2004...The Broadband Content Delivery Forum (BCDF) and the Service Creation Community (SCC) have announced that, effective January 1, 2005, the two will merge to form the Broadband Services Forum or simply The "BSF" for short. Comprehensive in nature, the newly created forum has as its mission to foster dialogue across the broadband value chain, including content, service and technology providers. The BSF has outlined itself as the international industry resource for providing tools and information to address the fundamental service and technology issues that impact the growth and health of the broadband industry. "Members of the BCDF and the SCC found that the two groups had grown into complementary organizations with common goals, membership and compatible programs,” said Derek Kuhn from Alcatel and Chairman, BCDF. "As a combined organization, the BSF provides a strong extended network of people that can be leveraged to address forum work plans and provide valuable thought leadership.” Craig Forbes from net.com and Chairman, SCC added, “We have been growing the SCC in terms of membership and activities this year. One of the strategic objectives has been to increase our collaboration with other organizations. When we met with the BCDF, there was immediate synergy. Joining forces was the easy decision to make.” Mr. Kuhn will serve as chairman, and Mr. Forbes as vice-chairman, of the interim board of directors of BSF.

BSF is made up of companies that the compound semi industry sells to and works closely with. The roster includes (with the * indicating board members): Accenture, Airespace, Inc., Alcatel*, Aliant Telecom*, Ascendent Telecommunications, Inc., Bridgewater Systems, British Telecommunications, Cincinnati Bell, Current Analysis, ECI Telecom, Engenio Information Technologies (formerly LSI Logic Storage Systems), Epicenter Inc., Goldman, Sachs, & Co., Harris Corporation, InStat/MDR, IP Infusion, Juniper Networks*, Maranti Networks*, MeTV Networks, Inc., Micromuse, Microsoft Corporation*, Motorola, NDS UK Ltd., net.com*, Nortel*, On Demand Group Limited*, Operax, Oracle*, PacketExchange, Philips Consumer Electronics, Sandial Systems, Inc., Siemens*, SkyStream Networks*, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Sprint, Telechoice, Telekom Austria AG*, The Hatchery, Thomson, Tony Fisch Consulting, Vista Advisers, Walt Disney Internet Group, Wandl Inc., Welsh Development Agency, Xanthum Partners, and Yipes. More details are included in the BSF news release.

University of Tokyo "Discovers" New Blue Metallic Compound

November 22, 2004...Researchers at the University of Tokyo, under the lead of Professor Shinichi Okoshi, have come across a new metallic compound whose magnetic forces changes according to the ambient humidity. According to a report via Nikkei Net the compound is called a Prussian blue magnet, and is said by the scientists to be the first substance discovered to have this quality, though there are substances whose magnetic force changes according to the temperature, the researchers said. The Prussian blue magnet, also called a cyano-bridged cobalt-magnesium-chromium metal assembly, appears pink when the humidity is high and blue at low humidity. In the experiments, the magnetic force of the compound lessened as the humidity dropped, and fell to zero when the humidity was about 7%. When the humidity was further lowered, the direction of the magnetic field reversed and the magnetic force started increasing.

Chinese Quantum Dot Targets 1300nm with InAs/GaAs Approach

November 22, 2004...A research group from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), headed by Prof. Niu Zhichuan from the State Key Laboratory for Semiconductor Superlattice and Microstructures which is affiliated with the CAS Institute of Semiconductors (ISCAS: link to English version) has taken a route away from InP-based materials and developed a GaAs-based long-wavelength laser device of InAs on GaAs to create a self-assembly quantum dot laser with lasing wavelength of 1.33 µm under continuous-wave operation mode at room temperature. The achievement is being hailed as the most important achievement in the field of GaAs-based near-infrared, long-wavelength materials and devices in China in recent years (). The group elected to diverge from using InP-based materials due to what they term are "a host of major difficulties" noting that the technology of optoelectronic integrated devices has become a hot topic in the world and that the near future the optical fiber communication network will be dominated by optoelectronic integrated devices in order to meet the increasing demands for higher-speed, more reliable and stable operation of data transferring and processing systems.

"Therefore it (the world) is in urgent need of developing new functional materials. GaAs-based semiconductors are acting as a good choice for developing such devices. The most important kinds of GaAs-based semiconductor materials working for near-infrared wavelength from 1.2 to 1.7µm are in the form of InAs self-assembled quantum dots, GaInNAs and GaInNAsSb quantum wells. The quantum dot structures attract scientists for their top performance as they excel in a high-speed operation with lower power consumption and new functions. The quantum wells are new multi-element compounds noted for their temperature stability. In recent years, these new semiconductor materials became a research focus in the most developed Western countries," the group stated in the official CAS news release, which includes considerable details of their work, motivation, and implementation vision to which we refer our interested CompoundSemi News readers.

Bookham Innovators Receive IEEE/LEOS Aron Kressel Award

November 22, 2004...Bookham Inc.'s Dr. Christoph Harder graciously received a prominent award for his ground-breaking work on laser technology at LEOS 2004 in Puerto Rico. The award is the IEEE/LEOS 2004 Aron Kressel award which was given to Dr. Harder and his colleagues, Dr. Volker Graf and Dr. Eberhard Latta for their pioneering contributions to high-reliability, high-power telecommunications pump lasers. The first 980nm pumped WDM telecom link (between the USA cities Chicago in the state of Illinois and Sacramento in the state of California) was powered up with these lasers. “I am honored to receive this award,” said Dr. Harder, Director of R&D at Bookham in Zurich. “It represents many years of work in this field; work which has had a significant, even a disruptive, impact on the development of today’s telecommunications systems, as it enabled long haul DWDM systems, including repeaterless transatlantic links.”

The annual award is given to individuals who have made important contributions to optoelectronic device technology. The work by Drs. Harder, Graf and Latta forms the basis of many of today’s leading products from Bookham, including 980nm pumps, 808nm as well as 9xxnm bars. “This award highlights the caliber of Bookham’s people and I am delighted that Christoph has received it,” said Giorgio Anania, chief executive officer of Bookham. “Bookham’s people are our most valuable asset and help us to retain our leading position in the optoelectronics field.” Earlier this year Bookham announced that it had entered the high power industrial laser market with the development and qualification of a family of high-power laser diode bars, based upon its telecoms market-leading 980nm gallium arsenide (GaAs) laser diodes. The products, designed to meet the needs and opportunities of key industrial sectors, were qualified in December 2003 and began shipping in early 2004. Company news release

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