The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced three solid state lighting projects to receive a total of $7.1 million in funding in response to the SSL Manufacturing R&D funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0000561. The two-year projects will focus on achieving significant cost reductions while maintaining quality by improving manufacturing equipment, processes, or monitoring techniques. The three companies themselves will add an additional $5 million in private-sector funding. The DOE did not disclose how much each company received of the total $7.1 million. The DOE hopes that the projects will ultimately create jobs and boost exports.
Durham, North Carolina-based Cree Inc., received funding for its proposed project titled, "Low-Cost LED Luminaire for General Illumination". Cree plans to develop an optimized LED fixture design for efficient manufacture that uses fewer raw materials. The goal of the project is to efficiently provide warm-white light over a minimum lifetime of 50,000 hours, while reducing the cost of manufacturing the major components and assembled products. The proposed LED fixture design could be readily integrated into buildings and outdoor applications without compromising the performance of the light source. The project reportedly builds upon Cree's existing LED platform and has the potential to quickly reduce the cost of producing an already highly efficient LED fixture and allowing it to compete with existing fluorescent systems.
KLA-Tencor of Milpitas, California received the second award for its p;reposed probect titled, "High Throughput, High Precision Hot Testing Tool for HBLED Wafer Level Testing"
Through the project, KLA-Tencor seeks to improve the color consistency of LEDs by utilizing a measurement tool during manufacturing that reduces the variation in LED quality, improving performance and reduces cost. According to KLA-Tencor, the current practice is to separate LEDs according to color during the manufacturing process to maximize product yield. Unfortunately, this creates variation in light output and color quality of the product, which leads to reduced performance and increased costs.
k-Space Associates of Dexter, Michigan received funding for its project titled, "Optical Metrology for Volume OLED Manufacturing". k-Space Associates plans to build on its existing optical monitoring technology to enable high-precision measurements of OLED layers during mass production. According to k-Space, most monitoring of the OLED layers during the manufacturing process currently takes place after the OLED material is produced. For this reason if problems are detected, there's little or no chance to change the production inputs. The tool will reportedly measure layer thickness and composition to ultimately control the efficiency, color, and lifetime of OLEDs. k-Space Associates expects that the tool will serve as a platform for future large‐scale OLED production facilities.
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