CompoundSemi Online - The Original Compound Semiconductor Industry Newspaper

January 9, 2007...This week we present a guest editorial by Nisa Khan who is best recognized in the compound semi industry for her pioneering work on 40 Gb/s InP modulators and switches at Bell Laboratories, which she continued on at JDSU and at her own startup Atrium Networks. With her recent Wall Street finance experience in managing assets at American Express, she is now following her true passion - contributing to technology leadership with a unique combination of technical and financial background.

Despite the cyclical nature of most economies, compound semiconductor products and technologies have continued to uniquely empower our lives and businesses for the past few decades. The impact of compound semiconductor-based products will be even more enormous in the future as the global economy takes new and powerful shape while the populous and developing countries like India, China, Brazil and others rapidly expand their economies. The unique characteristics of compound semiconductors enable us to produce ultra high-speed and high-power electronic and optoelectronic components with shrinking chip sizes and higher efficiencies, which no other materials have been known to match. I feel that further advancements in the CS technologies, along with the market need for information transport, information processing or computer-like gadgets, as well as efficient power, lighting and energy utilization by government, businesses, and consumers will drive the CS market to gigantic levels in the next several years. Consumer education and awareness, as well as industry partnership and cross collaboration for compound semiconductors, is now more crucial than ever for improving both people's lives and the global economies.

The role of compound semiconductors first became prominent as the march-off of the information age in the late 90's was aided by several compound semiconductor technologies for crucial and high-end applications, such as telecom lasers and photodetectors, and high-speed amplifiers for telecom and wireless equipment. Meanwhile, the consumer products and applications that use compound semiconductors have broadened vastly and are now enjoying a multi-billion dollar market. Some of these products include various playstations, handheld computers, wireless phones, DVD/CD players, and others. Currently the CS technology that is considered the most disruptive is that of Solid State Lighting (SSL) devices that use light emitting diodes (LEDs) for display and lighting, a CS technology that is expected to be widely used for general lighting in the future. These specific electronic and optoelectronic devices are a result of the unique bandgap characteristics of compound semiconductors leading to carrier generation and transport that were realized by scientists several decades ago. Although CS technologies have undergone numerous challenges and will still be overcoming many challenges to lower the cost of products while making them more efficient, it is now ever more clear that LEDs and modern consumer high-end gadgets will take the market for CS to grand new heights in the foreseeable future.

In general, high-performance compound semi electronic technology sectors face significantly lower challenges in the marketplace at present, compared to the high-performance compound semi optoelectronic technology sectors. This is primarily due to the fact that CS electronic technologies are more mature and often have fewer fundamental physics challenges compared to their optoelectronic counterpart. Since the CS-based consumer electronic market is currently much broader and better known, I wish to focus on the role of CS optoelectronics in tomorrow's consumer lives and economy, because I feel we need to better understand, and thus, better prepare for the ensuing impact. The major consumer applications for CS optoelectronics will obviously come from LEDs.

The various LED technologies for wide-usage consumer applications remain under development to improve cost, quality, and high-volume manufacturability. Major companies such as: Philips, GE, Toyota, and others currently have extensive LED development programs underway for deployment in general lighting markets, automotive lighting and display, LCD TV backlighting, traffic signals, mobile phone flashes, and various public and business place lightings. The potential advantages of replacing the current lighting technologies in these areas include: longer lifetime, lower energy consumption, low temperature operation, fast on/off response times, low heat generation, higher reliability (higher shock and vibration tolerances), and ultimately lower maintenance costs and overall cost savings. The biggest and potentially most important of these advantages may be that significant energy cost savings can be anticipated by consumers, government, and businesses, which is crucial as we all recognize the global energy consumption challenge for years to come.

Although currently limited, LEDs have already captured applaudable marketshare, totaling over $3 billion for consumers and businesses. These markets include, for example, lighting in refrigerator cases and signs in Wal-Mart stores, automotive headlights, display lighting in mobile handsets, and traffic lights. While various color such as red, blue, blue-green, and yellow-LEDs have been developed for some time, the white-LED is both harder to develop technologically and the one most in demand. Color-LEDs generally use Group III-Nitride based semiconductors in various binary, ternary, and even quaternary compounds such GaN, InGaN, and AlGaInP on single crystal substrates. The white-LED can be produced by methods such as wavelength conversion of single-color LEDs, mixing multiple color LEDs, and homoepitaxial ZnSe. While the color-mixing technique is the more efficient technique for producing white-LEDs, it usually poses a challenge for maintaining a fixed white color over time as the different color LEDs inside degrade differently over time.

LEDs have steadily improved in performance and cost over the past four decades and are expected to move from the current limited applications to the much larger market, i.e., general lighting. Based on research conducted by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA), LEDs (as Solid State Lighting Devices) will be the preferred method of illumination in homes and offices by 2025. As such, the white LEDs are building momentum at a rapid rate and we may very well see a revolution in lighting which would be comparable to blowing out the gaslights by Edison's incandescent lamp over 100 years ago. The LED technology will compete for all applications from the smallest personal lamp to the most elaborate lighting system for sports arenas, providing superior performance and lower cost of ownership, at any point in this dynamic range of 11 orders of magnitude. As discussed above, the most important benefit of this disruptive technology will be energy savings and according to Dr. Roland Haitz, a retired researcher from Agilent, a complete conversion to LED based lamps could reduce electricity consumption for lighting by up to 75% and reduce global coal production by approximately 600 Mtons/year. Indeed, there is no single technology investment on the horizon with a better environmental benefit to cost ratio. Numerous public and private small to very large companies are driving the current LED market from over $3 Billion currently to more than doubling it within the next two years. This pace is only expected to increase as we head toward 2025. Although there are too many companies involved in this space, the following are currently most noteworthy: Cree, Nichia, Osram, Philips-Lumileds, Toyota-Gosei, Seoul Semiconductors, and Showa Denko.

Another major area under development that will address the global energy challenge is are semiconductor photovoltaics (PV) or, simply, solar cells. Most are made of silicon, but the high efficiency, multi-junction CS-based cells preferred for satellite applications are being applied now to terrestrial applications. In addition to the traditional CS solar technologies created at Spectrolab and Emcore, a startup company named Nanosolar in California announced the making of cost efficient CIGS solar cells from copper indium gallium selenide. The solar cell process, in contrast to the traditional fossil-burning process, generates electricity without moving parts, noise, or pollution such as greenhouse gas emission. Currently the global energy demand is growing rapidly. An estimation from an Washington State University study in January 2003 projected that, in the years to come, a 25% increase in energy demand in industrial countries and more than a 100% increase in the developing countries are expected. This concerning demand along with the rising prices for fossil fuels, concerns about the electric grid's stability, and worries about global warming are all fueling the growth of solar cells. The industry is expected to grow from $11 billion in 2005 to $51 billion in 2015, according to a projection by Clean Edge Inc., a market research firm focused on clean technology. The solar cell technology is expected to provide cheaper electricity to the people in the US within the next ten years according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Adoption of this technology will also substantially reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., 25% reduction expected in California over the next 14 years), which will help expand the market for solar power.

Understanding that lighting and energy consumption are fundamental part of our lives, and hence, how successful disruptive technologies in these arenas can impact our lives and economy is straightforward. Further improvements in the LED technology, along with lower costs, will drive the current lighting and display market from a few billion to several tens of billions within the next decade, while dramatically saving the cost of ownership to individuals and businesses. The replacement of the current incandescent and fluorescent lighting will also provide energy savings of over 60% while virtually eliminating the emission of greenhouse gases from the current lighting technology. Less straightforward is the electronic device side of CS technology. But we have seen, and are living through, the age of what silicon has done for our society with communication and information processing electronic devices and systems. Compound semiconductors are capable of providing the same electronic functions as silicon at a significantly smaller scale, especially where silicon technology is challenged. CS solar cells replacing silicon are a prime example. Undoubtedly, the cost savings plus the environmental considerations provided by these important CS technologies will have gigantic impact leading to vast changes in consumers' lives and global economy. In order to make the implementation of the technologies rapid and efficient, relevant information distribution and sharing become especially important as the CS industry starts to escalate to very large proportions.

M. Nisa Khan, Ph.D.
Technology and Finance Consultant
3 Maple Drive, Colts Neck, NJ 07722
Email: nisa.khan@ieee.org

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