NCKU scientists strike gold at 2011 INPEX
A research team led by Wen-Chau Liu of the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) has won a gold award at the 2011 Invention & New Product Exposition (INPEX) for its highly efficient GaN based LEDs.
Held each year in Pittsburgh, INPEX offers over 1,000 innovations, new product ideas and technologies that can be licensed, manufactured, marketed or applied to a brand or product line.
Taiwan took home 26 gold, 12 silver and 5 special awards this year, making it the biggest winner in one of the world-recognised invention shows.
Among them, the gold-winning high current spreading efficiency GaN LED was the result of a collaboration between Wen-Chau Liu, Wei-Chou Hsu and students Yi-Jung Liu, Chi-Hsiang Hsu and Jian-Kai Liou, all based in NCKU.
According to Liu, the new invention is 520μm² by 250μm² in size and can last 420 minutes, which is 140 minutes more than traditional LEDs which only last 280 minutes, having at least 50% of battery life than traditional LED lights.
The compact and high energy-saving LED is ideally suited for use as backlighting in laptops, cell phones and outdoor billboards.
“Companies are asking about technology transfer and we have already applied for patent, so the possibility in commercialisation is very high,” Liu said.
Wen-Chau Liu has also won gold medals in the 2010 International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva and the 2010 International Trade Fair “Ideas-Inventions-New Products” (iENA) Nuremberg, Germany.
