Plessey's MAGIC HBLED wins solid state light application at Elektra Awards

Plessey's new innovative MAGIC (MAnufactured on GaN ICs) HBLED (High Brightness LED) products have won the Solid-State Lighting Application Category of the 2012 Elektra Awards. Barry Dennington, Plessey's COO, said, "LEDs are the next key phase of the drive to reduce carbon usage but widespread adoption has been held back by the high product costs and the low level of the light output. Our MAGIC technology solves both these problems opening the way for LED lighting to become widespread and help cut energy bills. We have invested millions of pounds in our MAGIC manufacturing lines in Plymouth that are ramping up to volume production this year."   MAGIC HBLEDs are manufactured using industry standard, silicon foundries at a much lower cost than current LED technologies based on sapphire or SiC (silicon carbide). The Plessey technology uses GaN (Gallium Nitride) on 6-inch silicon substrates. It requires a much thinner GaN layer at 2.5μm compared to 6 to 8μm of other GaN on Si technologies. This means less deposition time, so Plessey can do multiple production cycles in 24 hours to achieve higher throughputs and lower costs.   For the next generation products, Plessey intends to integrate MAGIC HBLED products with its range of sensor and power technologies to provide smart lighting with even greater energy saving and carbon footprint reduction. Plessey Semiconductors