Plessey Semiconductors has launched its first GaN-on-silicon LED product, made in its Plymouth fab.
"We can offer samples of our entry-level product and we are already discussing orders," company chief operating officer Barry Dennington told Electronics Weekly.
Production quantities can be ordered now, with lead times typically of six weeks, said Dennington.
Rather than lighting LEDs, which will come later, Plessey has started with indicator LEDs where price rather than power efficiency is the driver.
The LED delivers 2 lm at 20mA from a 3.5x2.7mm PLCC-2 package.
Made on 150mm silicon wafers, rather than the smaller expensive sapphire or SiC wafers used to make most white, blue and green LEDs, "they are very low cost", said Dennington, who would not be drawn on selling price.
"Inherently we are in the order of 80% less than the sawn-die cost of silicon carbide LEDs," he added, revealing that package and die each represent roughly half the cost of the finished device in these small packages.
A family of four or five of these low-power devices will be revealed "over a month or two", technology director Dr Keith Strickland told Electronics Weekly.
What type of devices?
Plessey is not giving much away.
"Expect one at 4 lm," is all Strickland would say.
Plessey got into white LEDs by buying University of Cambridge GaN-on-Si spin-out CamGaN.
At the time of the acquisition, Plessey was talking about lighting LEDs.
What has happened to them?
When we get up to 60 lm/W efficacy, we will introduce our first lighting product," said Strickland. "We will get to 100 lm/W in the next 12 months."
The first power LED, he said, is likely to be a 1W device.
Efficacy in the 2 lm signal LED works out at 32 lm/W, which is not great compared with bottom-end production lighting LEDs from other companies.
However, the firm is doing well as this is the first production GaN-on-Si LED from any company, and Plessey has gone from never having made an LED to manufacturing with this advance technology in 15 months.
In May last year Toshiba and Bridgelux announced a plan to make GaN-on-Si lighting LEDs on 200mm wafers, and late last year claimed to have started production on 150mm wafers, although little has been seen of the products.
