microLED ICs fabbed on 300mm wafers
Eight year-old Leti micro-LED spin-off Aledia has manufactured microLED ICs on 300mm (12”) silicon wafers.
The company, which developed its technology on 200mm (8”) silicon wafers over the past eight years.
“The larger size allows 60-100 smartphone displays to be made on a single 300mm wafer, versus approximately four-to-six using the present LED industry-standard, 4” sapphire substrate,” says Akedia CEO Giorgio Anania, “thanks to Aledia’s unique nanowire LED technology (3D LED), this can be done with commercially available processes and equipment, since it uses standard-thickness (780µm) silicon wafers.”
Planar, “2D” microLEDs are produced by depositing flat layers of GaN crystal on sapphire wafers of 100-150mm diameter (4-6”), with the majority of production today being on 100mm (4”) wafers. Aledia’s microLED technology grows GaN nanowires (GaN crystals of sub-micron diameter) on top of large-area silicon delivering 3D.t