Arrowhead subsidiary collaborates with Kyma technologies to reduce the cost of blue lasers and blue leds.
Arrowhead Research Corporation announced today that its majority-owned subsidiary, Aonex Technologies, Inc. has entered into a collaborative agreement with Kyma Technologies, Inc., a producer and marketer of semiconductor products, to develop materials to reduce the cost of gallium nitride (GaN)-based devices such as blue laser diodes and blue light emitting diodes (LEDs).
Blue laser diodes are an enabling technology for HD-DVD™ and Blu-Ray™ DVD players. Manufacturing these devices in high volume has proven challenging and has led to delays in such highly anticipated products as the Sony PlayStation 3™. Blue LEDs are used as light sources for a wide variety of applications, including back lights for cell phones, and are expected to one day replace conventional incandescent and fluorescent light sources because of their higher efficiencies and longer lifetimes.
Under the terms of the agreement, Aonex will provide Kyma with access to its proprietary wafer technology, A-Sapph™. Kyma will work to leverage the superior properties of A-SapphTM to produce large-area wafers suitable for the manufacture of GaN devices. Such large-area wafers could dramatically reduce the cost of GaN devices by enabling an increase in the number of chips per wafer while also substantially improving yields.
The complete press release can be read here.
