In brief: Cree, Finisar, Bookham, TDI
Cree brings kilolumen-output LED chip to light
Cree has made a single-chip LED with a light output of 1050 lm, which it says is equivalent to the output from an incandescent bulb.
The cool-white laboratory demonstration was driven at 4 A and attained an efficacy of 72 lm/W. A warm-white analog driven at the same current attained a light output of 760 lm with efficacy of 52 lm/W.
The Durham, North Carolina, firm said that it has historically commercialized R&D demonstrations such as these within 12 to 24 months.
“We ve worked 20 years to achieve lighting-class LED performance, and we still have plenty of ways to advance the technology further,” said John Edmond, Cree s director of advanced optoelectronics.
Wary Finisar pleased by revenue bounce
Finisar s quarterly sales have returned to the level recorded in the quarter before last, as it recovered from customers inventory adjustments.
Finisar recorded revenues of $105.7 million in the quarter to July 29, up 8.7 percent on the previous quarter, in a particularly opaque set of financial data.
Ongoing recalculations of its stock option payments meant that the Sunnyvale, California, company could not report profits and changes in ordering patterns of its customers meant it would give no projected figures.
“The turbulence we saw last quarter versus our expectation makes us leery [i.e. wary] about providing guidance, ” explained Jerry Rawls, Finisar s CEO.
Rawls did feel able to predict that VCSEL revenues would edge slowly down as JDSU and others produced more VCSELs in-house. Without providing any specific outlook, he emphasized the increasing global market size for 10 and 40 Gb/s network products, within which Finisar has more than doubled its sales over the past year.
Bookham pumps up the volume
Laser and module maker Bookham has qualified its 980 nm "OceanBright" submarine pump lasers and commenced volume shipments, marking its formal entry into the submarine market.
In reliability testing, changes in the characteristics of the OceanBright range were “negligible”, culminating in a predicted two percent variation in output power over a lifetime of 27 years.
San Jose, California, based Bookham was named as the lead supplier for 980 nm submarine pump lasers by Tyco in February this year, for use in erbium-doped fiber amplifiers.
TDI launches 4-inch GaN and AlN shipments
Technology and Devices International is now shipping HVPE-grown 4-inch AlN and GaN epiwafers to its customers, and says it will begin production of 6-inch versions in 2008.
The AlN wafers are 10-30 microns thick and grown on SiC, targeted for HEMT development and production.
Its GaN epiwafers are 7-12 microns thick and deposited on sapphire substrates, intended for use in GaN LED manufacturing.
