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pari
11-11-2006, 12:17 AM
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=LUBCFJHJ1WFT2QSNDLSCK HA?articleID=193700333




EE Times: Latest News
Japan's Shimei grows blue LED on silicon wafer

Yoshiko Hara
EE Times
(11/09/2006 4:45 PM EST)

TOKYO — Shimei Semiconductor Co. has developed a blue LED grown on a silicon wafer that it plans to make available by next April.

Using silicon wafers as a substrate for GaN epitaxy could drastically lower the cost, simplify LED structure, extend the lifetime and enable the integration of an optical device in CMOS circuits, the company claims.

The prototype LED emits blue light of the 450-nm wavelength and an output power of 10 mW. Shimei said it expects to improve performance through future prototyping. LED lifetime was disclosed.

Currently, sapphire substrates are widely used for GaN ataxia growing. If silicon wafers can be used for the substrate of GaN crystalline deposition, "silicon wafers have a lot of advantages [and] it is easy to make large area LEDs, and drivers and other circuits can be fabricated on the same silicon substrate," said Hirofumi Yamamoto, founder and chief technology officer of Shimei Semiconductor (Kyoto, Japan).

Shimei Semiconductor's blue LED on a silicon wafer

The device has a layered structure consisting of a cathode on the bottom, the silicon substrate, buffer layers, an emitting layer and an anode on top. As the silicon substrate absorbs light generated at the emitting layer, a reflective film is formed on the silicon to improve efficiency.

Many attempts were made to form a GaN buffer layer on a substrate in order to overcome the wide lattice consonant gap, but Yamamoto said the buffer layers are different from conventional buffers. He declined to elaborate.

The company claims a proprietary material composition and a turned material organic chemical vapor phase epitaxial growth (MOVPE) process that enabled GaN epitaxy on silicon. In addition to the blue LED, Shimei said it is working on LEDs with longer wavelengths, including green and even red. It has also started blue laser development.

Shimei said it is readying production lines with a monthly capacity of 3 million units and will start sampling in April 2007. The LEDs will be supplied in bare chip or wafer form.


If this turns out to be true, it would stab at the heart of the nay sayer's statement PS3 price cannot drop, Blu-ray would be very expensive... CELL is expensive.. CELL remap for 65nm is being done. 45nm work would start soon... So CELL would definitely get cheaper. Same thing applies for RSX too.. Sony has let the user to upgrade the hard disk...

And never bet against CMOS...,

Diresu
11-11-2006, 12:34 AM
Good stuff.

Crossbar
11-11-2006, 01:26 AM
This is great news for blu-ray!!!!!

More cheaper players will help drive blu-ray sales and maybe HD-DVD as well. I think someone said blue LEDs was used also by HD-DVD players (the difference was the disk manufacturing, which is cheaper for HD-DVDs). Can someone confirm that?

xbdestroya
11-11-2006, 01:31 AM
Crossbar I feel like you're becoming more and more manic lately... get a hold man! What was that, like five exclamation marks? ;)

Anyway I'm not sure who Pari was refering to with the naysayers who think Sony can't drop the price, but in all honesty Blu-ray drives should be the fastest dropping component in PS3 period. Now, if this Shimei Semiconductor technique reaches mass market applicability, so much the better... but I think people need to realize just how much of the cost and supply problems up until now have been simply yield related.

With the afforementioned price drops in Cell and RSX imminent, in addition to BD maturing, you can be sure that PS3 - relative to initial costs - will likely be dropping in price faster than 360 from a BOM standpoint. Now that's not to say it will surpass it in absolute costs, but that the 360 already incorporates mature technologies, which tend not to drop in cost as rapidly (speaking here really of the DVD drive).

Crossbar
11-11-2006, 03:00 AM
Crossbar I feel like you're becoming more and more manic lately... get a hold man! What was that, like five exclamation marks? ;)
You are right I need to cool down, I shouldn't wear out my keyboard.

Anyway I'm not sure who Pari was refering to with the naysayers who think Sony can't drop the price,
Perhaps he was thinking of the recent Merril Lynch report?

I agree, there will lot of stuff in the BOM that will go down in price.
I was really suprised that they actually will be including PS2 circuitry for backward compatibility, probably more or less a complete EE+GS@90 piece, (wonder about the 32 MB RDRAM?), that won't come for free, thatīs for sure.

pari
11-11-2006, 04:30 AM
Anyway I'm not sure who Pari was refering to with the naysayers who think Sony can't drop the price, but in all honesty Blu-ray drives should be the fastest dropping component in PS3 period.

The naysayers are from the xbox fan community...


With the afforementioned price drops in Cell and RSX imminent, in addition to BD maturing, you can be sure that PS3 - relative to initial costs - will likely be dropping in price faster than 360 from a BOM standpoint. Now that's not to say it will surpass it in absolute costs, but that the 360 already incorporates mature technologies, which tend not to drop in cost as rapidly (speaking here really of the DVD drive).

Both 360 & PS3 would have the same price drop curve (unless MS is not getting a 45nm version of the CPU) for the CPU & GPU with fab advantage for Sony.. On drive I agree with you, DVD has pretty much reached the asymptotic point, Blu-ray Drive has the most to reduce in cost...

game designer
11-11-2006, 04:40 AM
I was under the impression that HD DVD was using the same laser as before (red), but maybe I'm wrong. Anyone?

GD

This is great news for blu-ray!!!!!

More cheaper players will help drive blu-ray sales and maybe HD-DVD as well. I think someone said blue LEDs was used also by HD-DVD players (the difference was the disk manufacturing, which is cheaper for HD-DVDs). Can someone confirm that?

xbdestroya
11-11-2006, 04:57 AM
Yeah, HD-DVD uses the same blue laser diodes that Blu-ray does.

Garfunkel
11-11-2006, 05:18 AM
yes, HDDVD also uses Blue lasers.

stanDarsh
11-11-2006, 07:26 AM
Just at a different wavelength.

Z
11-11-2006, 11:04 AM
Crossbar I feel like you're becoming more and more manic lately... get a hold man! What was that, like five exclamation marks?

lol. I can understand how he feels. after all, a brand new PS console doesn't get released everyday. ;)

good news on the diods. :)

8_Bit
11-11-2006, 11:42 AM
Just at a different wavelength.

Nope. They use the same wavelength laser as well. Both 405 nm. The difference is in the lens/focal point. Blu-ray uses a lens with a numerical aperture of .85. HD DVD uses .65, which is just a bit over standard-def DVD's .60.