As well as collaborating with an Australian university to develop blue lasers, Taiwanese firm LEDEX is mass-producing nitride LED chips and epiwafers. Bob Johnstone reports.

Taiwan s LED makers are putting blue and green LEDs into mass production. But they are also cranking out patents, which they hope will protect them when Nichia s lawyers come knocking on their door. LEDEX is perhaps the largest of the island s 14 or so nitride wannabes. The company began selling wafers and chips last December. According to LEDEX president Tony Wu, annual production capacity has reached 15 000 wafers. "We re a similar size to Uniroyal already," Wu claims. The company operates three MOCVD reactors at its newly built $35 million plant in the southwestern Taiwanese port of Kaohsiung. Though blue and green devices account for 90% or more of LEDEX s production, the firm is also fabricating ultraviolet LEDs. "We can make devices operating from 390 to 550 nm," Wu says. LEDEX is co-operating with mainland Chinese companies in order to develop applications for UV LEDs. The firm has a head start in this area thanks to good relationships between the mainland government and its parent company, Yuh Chen. This group, whose chairman is Wu s father, has extensive interests including construction, hotels and real estate. "We re talking about letting someone do the OEM work [i.e. the LED packaging], then we buy back the finished products and sell them to the government," Wu explains. UV LEDs can be used to excite phosphor materials, thereby creating white light. Among the possible applications are roadside lighting and the illumination of signs. The Chinese government recently approved the building of a very long highway that will run from the north of the country to the south. LEDEX has already sent samples for what could turn out to be a very big market. Meanwhile the company is keeping its profile as low as possible. "Our focus is niche applications," Wu says. "We re not trying to compete in dominant markets with Toyoda Gosei or Agilent." In particular, LEDEX is keen to avoid attracting Nichia s attention, which has stated publicly that it will defend its patents at all costs. But, anticipating an encounter with the Japanese company, LEDEX is accumulating a portfolio of its own intellectual property. In December, soon after starting its marketing activities, the company applied for three patents in Taiwan and the US. Two of these concern wafer fabrication; the other relates to chip processing. LEDEX plans to file applications for four more patents this year. "We re using a different LED structure [than Nichia] and different growth conditions," Wu says. Concerning the chip-processing patent he comments: "We re trying to reduce the chip-processing time and also the number of steps the procedure cannot be completely different, but we can eliminate some of the steps and also use our own methods." Wu is reluctant to divulge further details. But he believes the patents should afford LEDEX some protection in case Nichia sues. "We cannot stop them suing us," he says, "but patents are useful when you go to patent court; at least we will have a very positive position." LEDEX s precious intellectual property springs mostly from the brain of the company s star researcher and vice-president, Alan Li. A native of mainland China, Li did his PhD and postgraduate research at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. Li moved to the National University of Singapore in 1998. Starting from scratch, Li demonstrated within a year that he could make blue LEDs. Word of this achievement reached Wu who had identified optoelectronics as a high-tech area with good prospects. He immediately recruited Li, who single-handedly designed and equipped the LEDEX plant in Kaohsiung. Since Wu is also an Australian citizen, LEDEX leveraged its connection with the southern hemisphere. Thus far the company has sent two production engineers to ANU for training in ohmic contact and various processing issues. In the second quarter of this year the company plans to establish an advanced R&D facility in Canberra. "BlueLab" will eventually employ about 15 scientists plus another 15 support staff. Investment in the lab will be around $10 million. BlueLab will focus on two projects. One will involve co-operation with the optoelectronics group at ANU to develop long wavelength components. But far more important is the development of a commercial blue laser, a feat that only Nichia has achieved so far. There are two reasons why establishing an R&D facility so far from home makes sense. One is that Taiwanese universities do not produce the right kind of graduates. The other is the danger of poaching. Wu explains that in Taiwan, as in Silicon Valley, "engineers and scientists might be working for Company A in the morning, then they talk to someone at lunch, and in the afternoon they go to work for Company B." Locating your most advanced technology offshore makes such a scenario much less likely.