Sanyo and Sharp plan violet laser production
At present, Nichia is the only commercial supplier of violet lasers, although Cree and Toyoda Gosei are close to market and Sharp has announced plans to launch a commercial product late next year (see below). In order to avoid patent infringement issues, Sanyo has developed an alternative to Nichia s GaN-on-sapphire approach. Sanyo s laser uses a GaN substrate and has a vertical structure with top and bottom electrodes. The device also employs ion implantation in the p-type GaN cladding layer which stabilizes the laser s output without the need to fabricate a ridge waveguide (see Compound Semiconductor May 2002, p10).
Sanyo is the third largest supplier of red and infrared laser diodes in the world, producing about 13 million units a month for CD and DVD drives.
Sharp plans blue laser launch
Sharp aims to begin mass production of blue lasers for high-capacity, next-generation optical storage systems in late 2003. The company s President, Katsuhiko Machida, made the announcement at an opening ceremony to mark the completion of Sharp s new laser fab in Hiroshima prefecture, which will produce the blue lasers.
At present, the new plant and Sharp s older factory in Nara prefecture produce red and infrared lasers for DVD and CD systems. Sharp produced about 15 million such lasers per month in the April-June period. Production is now being trimmed by 5-10% in response to a slump in sales of personal computers; about half of Sharp s lasers are used in the optical drives of PCs.
Sharp also announced that it plans to transfer assembly and packaging operations for semiconductor lasers to a wholly owned subsidiary in Indonesia. Since production volumes of these products tend to fluctuate widely, Sharp will try to stabilize costs by shifting the assembly work to the Indonesian plant where many employees are contract workers. The factory is also closer to customers that make audiovisual equipment and PCs in other Southeast Asian countries and China.
