An industry association is planning to develop manufacturing standards that will help the LED industry reduce costs and accelerate market penetration.

SEMI, an industry association serving the manufacturing supply chains for the microelectronic, display and photovoltaic industries, has formed a high-brightness (HB) LED Standards Committee. The goal is to develop manufacturing standards to eliminate unnecessary costs, and facilitate innovation in equipment and processes.

The HB-LED Standards Committee met for the first time on November 11 and initiated standards Task Forces on wafers, carriers, assembly and automation. The Committee and Task Forces are comprised of industry leaders in HB-LED devices, sapphire wafers, MOCVD wafer processing, and key equipment and materials suppliers to the LED industry.

The overall HB-LED market will grow a remarkable 68 percent this year to reach $9.1 billion, with projections of doubling in size to $18.4 billion by 2014, according to industry analysts at Strategies Unlimited. This high-growth phase is currently driven primarily by LED TVs, displays, mobile phones, and other portable devices. However, the next growth phase of HB-LEDs will result from increasing demand for solid-state lighting where significant cost reductions will be required to replace conventional lighting sources.

Industry analysts expect a 10- to 20-fold decrease in costs over the next five years to achieve rapid penetration of solid-state lighting into commercial and residential lighting applications. The SEMI HB-LED Standards Committee has been formed to help reach those aggressive cost targets.

During its inaugural meeting, the HB-LED Standards Committee agreed to form task forces in four critical areas of LED manufacturing:

• Wafers: Unlike silicon wafers used in semiconductor manufacturing, there currently are no industry standards addressing wafer geometries, surface characteristics, wafer ID, wafer orientation, and other features, resulting in costly proliferation of wafer types and styles. The objective of this Task Force will be to analyze and develop wafer standards (starting with sapphire wafers) that will reduce the proliferation of varying wafer types on the market