A South Korean company has developed a technology that can be used to make red LEDs by developing gallium nitride (GaN) on a sapphire wafer substrate. It will be interesting to see whether the development can be a steppingstone for improvement in reliability and durability of red LED.
Soft-EPi announced on Monday that it has succeeded in making red LEDs using GaN. The company explained that it used a same method for making blue and green LEDs where GaN is developed on a sapphire substrate.
According to the company, most of red LEDs are currently made through aluminum gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP) or a fluorescent substance. However, red LEDs based on AlGaInP are very expensive and tend to lose their effectiveness as they become smaller.
On the other hand, red LEDs based on GaN are relatively cost effective and have excellent mechanical strength and highly reliable. However, there has yet to be any company that has successfully developed red LED based on GaN until Soft-EPi. Although there were cases when red LEDs were developed through special techniques such as ‘nano-rod’, none of the developments came close to mass-production.