News: Optoelectronics
22 November 2023
Nichia adds in-house production of red laser chips to production of blue and green
Nichia Corp of Tokushima, Japan, the world’s largest gallium nitride (GaN)-based light-emitting diode/laser diode (LED/LD) manufacturer and inventor of high-brightness blue and white LEDs, has started in-house production of a high-power red laser diode chip and will sell laser packaged products including this high-power red LD chip from spring 2024.
Compared with those using conventional lamps or LED light sources, laser projectors with the three primary colors of red, green and blue have the advantage of a much wider color reproduction range, as well as the ability to achieve high brightness while maintaining compact size and high efficiency. In recent years, the demand for such projectors has been increasing rapidly, not only for high-luminance movie theater projectors but also for individual consumers such as laser TVs and small smart projectors.
Laser diodes play an important role in determining the specifications of projectors, and Nichia says that it has been required to flexibly respond to various customer requests for the performance of each RGB color LD. Nichia had been manufacturing blue and green LD chips in-house, but the red LD chips had been procured from outside suppliers. So, the quality, cost and supply of red LD chips were dependent on suppliers, and the challenge was how to meet the various needs of customers.
Nichia started development of watt-class high-power red LD chips and is now producing them in-house. It has also made upfront investments in mass-production facilities and secured production capacity to meet the demand for RGB LDs. In addition to blue and green LD chips, in-house production of red LD chips will enable Nichia to manufacture all three primary color LD chips, allowing it to flexibly consider and respond to various requests from customers.
Nichia will start selling laser diode packages utilizing its in-house manufactured red laser chips from spring 2024. In addition, the red LD chips used in existing products will be gradually replaced with internally produced chips, rather than those procured from external suppliers. For example, Nichia’s QuaLas RGB product has multiple RGB laser diode chips densely mounted in one small package, and will be one of the firm’s main products with in-house red LD chips. QuaLas’s optical output power in each RGB color is 8.3W for blue (typical wavelength 465nm), 4.8W for green (typical wavelength 525nm), and 10.0W for red (typical wavelength 643nm), suggesting a suitable combination for providing a good white balance for the display (see Figures 1 and 2).
To address the increasing market demand and advancements in performance for laser projectors, as well as explore further application possibilities, Nichia aims to accelerate the development and commercialization of red LD products with improved efficiency and output power by implementing in-house manufacturing.
