Seoul Viosys begins production of rare-earth-free white light emitter
semiconductor-today.com> WICOP 3 generates white light from gallium nitride (GaN) alone.
Gallium might be a problem. "China accounted for 99% of worldwide primary low-purity gallium production. The remaining primary low-purity gallium producers outside of China included Japan and Russia. Germany, Hungary, and Kazakhstan ceased primary production in 2016, 2015, and 2013, respectively. Ukraine most likely ceased primary production in 2022. Several new gallium production projects were announced including those in Australia, Canada, Greece, Kazakhstan, and the Republic of Korea."[1]
The price of gallium has increased by a factor of 10 in the last 10 years. It's doubled since last year.[2] A huge new demand for gallium is going to be a problem.
[1] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-gallium.pd...
Is it just uneconomic to extract it in other countries? It seems to be a byproduct of aluminum and zinc mining, and those mines are very widespread.
> Is it just uneconomic to extract it in other countries?
Yes mostly. The West outsourced this market due to heavy environmental and financial costs of extracting it. It’s sort of the same story as for a lot of the rare earth elements.
If it was marginally economic for a time while the price was 1/10th of the current price, it must be economic now. This appears to be yet another case of China undercutting, creating a monopoly, and then jacking the prices up.
The environment concerns are the issue. If stories about China are to be believed, getting it out of the ground and onto a train isn't the hard part, it's that doing so destroys the environment and China is unique positioned to not give a shit about the environment itself or with people that live near the mine protesting and suing the government for causing cancer and going all Erin Brockovich on them.
A quick search suggests that modern gallium extraction is not particularly toxic, and is no worse than the Bayer process itself. China uses ion exchange technology that has never been successfully commercialized in the west. i.e they invested in making clean methods competitive, about 20 years ago. In fact, they have monopolized much of the ion exchange supply chain.
https://payneinstitute.mines.edu/strategic-intervention-to-r...
> China produces approximately 98% of the global gallium supply and 88% of the global germanium supply; dominance has been fueled by government intervention. Beijing mandated its rapidly expanding aluminum producers to install the capacity to extract gallium. Between 2005 and 2015, China’s production of low-purity gallium surged from 22 metric tons to 444 metric tons, a nearly 2000 percent increase. This move flooded the market and forced producers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, and Kazakhstan to shutter their operations.
Unless there are regulations put in place since then about environmental pollutants. It is a hypocrisy from western nations to "outsource" it though: it ends up in the same seas, so the damage is just the same, just NIMBY.
Canada's is a addon to the aluminum production line, ao it might not take a whole ton to expand that production
Rio Tinto is already on it in Quebec. The pilot plant is planned to ramp up production in 2027.
https://www.riotinto.com/en/news/releases/2026/rio-tinto-adv...
Isn't GaN already the base for blue led and for all current white-ish led lighting?
Here they are somehow eliminating the need for phosphors for color conversion but they didn't say how.
I mean, if GaN is a problem we are already in a bad shape.
This is why I laugh every time somebody seriously suggests there's going to be a war with China because the West would collapse without Chinese exports. It's just not going to happen.
The problem with outsourcing all your manufacturing so you can mildly increase profits and destroy any organized labor is that whoever you outsourced it to holds you hostage.
Any talk of this is just propaganda to sell weapons and increase the "defense" budget.
So gallium is a byproduct of bauxite mining but requires some sophistication. China produces 60% of the world's aluminum. India is the second largest producer but doesn't have the infrastructure to extract gallium. That will probably change. But it is a sophisticated process so you need an entire supply chain for that too. China has that. India does not (currently).
But India would avoid the geopolitical issues of being dependent on China or Russia.
> and destroy any organized labor
Hilariously not any organized labor, just the local group. The largest organized labor group in the history of the world is alive and well, and is headquartered in Beijing.
This was basically just a case of kicking the can down the road really hard. The can is still there, waiting for you, and you are now completely dependent on it (oh and it has nuclear weapons).
Independent labor unions are illegal in China. Are you referring to the ACFTU? That is about as much a labor union as is the 'peoples' republic of china is run by the people. The ACFTU is primarily concerned with industrial output matching state targets and not particularly concerned with worker welfare.
PRC
> This is why I laugh every time somebody seriously suggests there's going to be a war with China because the West would collapse without Chinese exports. It's just not going to happen.
> The problem with outsourcing all your manufacturing
Not having a war is a good thing, not a problem.
Critical dependencies on foreign countries can be problematic if those countries start doing things you don't like, for example invading Taiwan.
Why is that the common thinking, China has not even invaded a country for centuries. While the West particularly the USA have destroyed a lot of countries. Taiwan is even part of China since it is a rebel province. I really am curious why this idea is widespread in the USA.
The Chinese government calling an event the "Peaceful Liberation of Tibet" doesn't negate many others in the world calling the same event the "Chinese invasion of Tibet".
Rinse, Repeat.
It was also 1950. And what never gets brought up is that the Chinese invasion ended the practice of slavery in Tibet. Yes, slavery. They called it "serfdom" but these "serfs" could be bought and sold, you know, like property, like slaves.
When exactly has this been "rinse. repeated"ed since?
China attempted to invade Taiwan several times last century, they just didn't have the naval capability to take even Kinmen.
They are two separate countries now, unless you think North/South Korea are the same, Russia/Ukraine, etc.
> They are two separate countries now
No, they are not. The US legally recognized Taiwan (fka Formosa) as Chinese territory in 1943 and 1945 and legally recognized the PRC as the sole legal government of China in 1979, following a similar recognition by the UN in 1971.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12503
There are only 11 countries in the world that recognize Taiwan as a sovereign entity and the largest are Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_T...
When you visit Taiwan, do you see any Chinese officials at the border control? Do you have apply for a Chinese visa, or follow Chinese laws in the country?
It is de facto a country, not de jure, for obvious reasons. You can pretend otherwise, but what's the point in engaging in a discussion where you get to invent your own reality?
Invaded Taiwan? Oh jeez. It was a civil war. And the KMT lost and fled to Taiwan.
Separate countries? All but ~10 countries on Earth including the US and all of Europe have what's come to be called the One China Policy. Taiwan is not recognized as an independent nation. It's really Schrodinger's nation, both independent and not at the same time and God forbid anybody opens the box and forces the issue.
The one China policy, which is the US stance and distinct from China's "one China principle", is accepted by the US with a wink fingers crossed behind their back.
De facto vs. de jure is what you're trying to describe, and I'm sticking with the practical one.
> China has not even invaded a country for centuries.
You should open a history book. Or two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo...
I find it hard to believe this comment was made in good faith.
You should understand what you're reading. The only example really is the annexation of Tibet in 1950, which was obviously controversial but it's also complicated because it ended the practice of slavery in Tibet. Yes, slavery.
Korea? China ended up getting involved to support the North Korean government so China (and the USSR) didn't have a US client state on their border.
Laos? This was bad because China supported the Khmer Rouge.
Vietnam? Military assistance to the North Vietnam government to resist a US imperialist invasion. Did China invade? No. Do they occupy it now? No.
The rest are basically just minor border disputes with Vietnam, Burma, India, etc. And China hasn't really been involved in any foreign military action since 1979, 47 years ago. I'll stack that up against the US in particular as well as the European colonial powers (even in modern times).
China invaded Vietnam in 1979. In response to Vietnam invading Cambodia, to be fair. But that's still an invasion in my book.
And Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia was well justified, as far as these things go. Pol Pot's cross border raids and ongoing genocide of Vietnamese (and other) civilians required a response (see the Ba Chúc massacre).
It is my understanding that mainland China is the rebel province ;)
Did you forget Tibet?
this idea is widespread everywhere bar China, not just in the USA...something related with free speech
> This is why I laugh every time somebody seriously suggests there's going to be a war with China because the West would collapse without Chinese exports. It's just not going to happen.
Sounds like all the more reason for china to start a war.
Just having one side dependent isn't going to stop war.
Would it? India has some relations with Russia….
> This is why I laugh every time somebody seriously suggests there's going to be a war with China because the West would collapse without Chinese exports. It's just not going to happen.
This is almost the exact same argument that was used to justify economic cooperation with Russia, they’d never start a war in Europe because their economy would collapse!
Ooos.
In hindsight everything is obvious, but it was a close call and there were many moments history could have taken a different route. Sanctions were painful for russia, but so was cutting ties of a lot of industry towards russia in east germany for instance. A bit more cooperation (and maybe less US started wars as a guidance) and all would be quite different.
Thing is, it wasn't hindsight. The US had been warning Europe about the dangers of dependency on Russian energy since at least 2016 through 2-3 administrations (see my other comment for the citations).
This warning goes back much much longer than 2016 even. Minimizing dependence of Europe on USSR/Russian energy was an unsung large part of Reagan's administration's strategy for winning the Cold war which was largely an economic battle whose policy preconditions for economic warfare were set as far back as 1962.
After Reagan's election in 1980 the US tried very hard to slow and/or block the creation of the Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod (Trans-Siberian) pipeline when it started imposing sanctions on the USSR after it declared martial law in Poland. German president Schroeder had agreed to the pipeline in 1980.
The US imposed export controls on technical equipment used for building that pipeline. It urged European governments not to build the pipeline, it then expanded the embargo to all global subsidiaries of US companies and anyone with licenses with US firms. The US even allegedly created dummy plans for covert defective pipeline equipment and leaked those plans resulting in a trans siberean pipeline explosion that delayed the project. (Some claim the explosion was caused by bad construction techniques and/or was just a psyop.)
All this to pressure the Russian economy which was not in good shape and for whom the pipeline would have been an economic lifeline for the USSR. The Europeans, wanting to reduce middle eastern dependence on oil persisted and eventually got the US to rollback the global sanctions in return for other forms of sanctions. Peter Schweitzer wrote about this as early as his 1994 book "Victory" but there are various others who have covered it since. The pipeline started shipping oil to the French in 1984 despite all that. The US started its pipeline focus rather late in part because it did nothing under Carter, but the energy dependence it helped lock in was a major, major bone of contention in the early 80s between the US and Europe.
Yes and europe was warning the US not to engage with Iraq and now Iran in the way the US did.
Also we read the warning as "don't buy from them, rather buy from us".
And it was extensivly debated in general.
That would be a lot more compelling if we didn’t already know how that story ended. I also think framing this as US-EU competition rather than the EU running its economic engine on cheap Russian fuel is misleading.
The EU kept at it with plans to expand until the war started for the second time and “someone” took it upon themselves to violently sever that link.
Neither the US, nor EU nor russia is a monolithic block. So I try to avoid black and white framing in general. But especially the US warningbefore 2014, when at the same time with surplus fracking gas, not many considered serious. Besides, while everyone was buying from the Saudis and co. So why not russia?
Now at latest by 2014 that should have changed indeed. But even then different approaches would have been possible then cutting all ties and hope this will work out better.
This is ahistorical, at least from the POV of US administrations.
I'm no fan of Donald Trump but this was one of his rare Ws. At a NATO summit in 2018, he warned Europe about the dangers of dependency on Russian energy and basically bullied Germany into building an LNG plant, something that was critical to Europe after Russia invaded Ukraine 4 years later [1].
Biden as Vice President to Obama warned Europe of the same thing in 2016 [2] regarding Nord Stream 2.
So American administrations have consistently and repeatedly warned Europe about the dangers over 6+ years. So how can anyone argue that "[Russia would] never start a war in Europe" when the US said basically that?
[2]: https://www.dw.com/en/biden-warns-europe-against-dependency-...
Yeah both sides of US spectrum told Europe for a decade plus, but when the entire German political class is captured by Russia, what do you even do?
What does the color look like? Producing light that falls within the white region of the CIE diagram is one thing… if it’s too yellow or too blue it could be an issue. Maybe that’s something that can be worked out over time.
The article does not explain what they use, but it seems to imply that there is no fluorescent conversion layer and the white light comes directly from the LED.
That could be done if the LED actually contains a multiple structure combining red, green and blue LEDs, but in the past such a combined LED had the disadvantage that in time the efficiency of the 3 components degraded at a different rate, which resulted in a color shift.
For now, the luminous efficiency of this LED is quite poor, unsuitable for lighting but only for indicator LEDs or display applications, but they claim that for such small LEDs even the traditional LEDs had poor efficiency and they hope to improve the efficiency later to more acceptable levels.
Does that mean the spectrum will have 3(or more) distinct spike at some wavelength , like old CFL ?
Presumably so, though the LEDs could be designed so that the peaks are relatively broad and overlapping, to give an acceptable spectrum coverage.
But the press release does not have any information about this, so the peaks could also be narrow, resulting in a poor CRI.
Indeed. Would love to see a spectrograph
Even if it's perfectly centered on a nice blackbody point, if the spectral distribution is spiky, it will still look bad in real-world usage
Looking bad isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for many applications, not even for decorative ones. Just look at the piercing bluish white LED Christmas lights that many people have put up, rather than the somewhat more expensive "warm" colored ones.
It's is usually a deal breaker if used for room lighting, rather than display lighting. Especially where food is involved. Try swapping you dining room lights for RGB.
Not sure why this is downvoted. It's simple color theory, and the whole reason the CRI measure exists.
Unfortunately, CRI or Ra, agreed upon in 1974, is more of a "how well do eight pastels look when illuminated by this light spectrum?"
CIE's R96a (1999) remains stuck in a disagreement between scientists and manufacturers. This means that lights currently specified with a CRI value are advertising an inaccurate measure of their ability to reveal the color of objects.
Knowing even only the 1974 CRI of a light source is much better than knowing nothing about it.
A very good CRI does not guarantee a very good color reproduction, but a poor CRI guarantees a bad color reproduction.
I've seen many very new comments start out grey until someone votes for it. No idea why that is.
IIRC/IIUC, GaN could only deal with UV or at most deep-ish blue, for both input and output, due to bandgap or whatever quantum reasons I don't understand. To create white light from light emitted by a GaN device, it needs to be downconverted into visible range by use of either phosphorous materials or a nanoparticle resembling them that are activated by blue light and emit its own light. On most white LEDs, this is done by that yellow goop of plastic material dabbed on top of blue LEDs.
Could this be like nanostructure based? Like nanoscale etching that messes with the light, created on top of UV LEDs?
The drawings in the article show that the yellow goop is no longer there.
If they do not use a multiple LED structure but they still have a fluorescent conversion layer, the layer must be very thin and deposited on the top surface of the LED. It could consist of "quantum dots", like in some TV panels, i.e. very small crystals which emit light of a color depending on the composition and size of the nanocrystal when illuminated with ultraviolet or blue light.
However, "quantum dot" is a term that has already been used for a long time in marketing with the intention to suggest a superior technology. If they were using this, I expect that they would have bragged about it.
So from the wording of the press release I think that a multiple LED structure is more likely than a "quantum dot" conversion layer, even if the latter would provide both a better spectrum coverage and superior aging characteristics (by avoiding a color hue shift in old LEDs).
Ooh, cool. I'd like me some luminous concrete please. I like these order of magnitude changes in common technology -- in this case, way smaller minimum size and more efficient per square nanometer -- the use cases language is a good reminder that the innovation part ("Look! This is cool!") often (usually?) precedes the most compelling use cases.
I imagine this is like 20 years away from hitting consumer design, but I bet it'll be used for some cool stuff.
I wonder if we'll ever see nanotech xenon arc lamps.
Laser projectors with light modulators based on nanotech mirrors have already replaced xenon arc lamps in some of their main applications, long ago.
Where you really need white light with a continuum spectrum, there are very few alternatives to arc lamps.
> Seoul Biosys plans to broaden its technology applications to augmented reality (AR) displays and optical communication for artificial intelligence (AI) data transmission. They are also developing a method to transmit data using densely arranged micro LEDs around 10µm in size.
Can someone who is an expert on the topic comment about if the statement regarding AI is true and if so then by how much (and how big/small of a problem it is), or if the Company is suggesting it out of pure hype of AI mania.
> Market research firm Omdia projects that the micro LED display market revenue will grow from $10.54 million this year to approximately $6.8 billion by 2032, particularly in applications for smart glasses and ultra-small displays.
> The WICOP technology involves directly mounting LED chips onto substrates without separate wires or packaging. Seoul Semiconductor and Seoul Biosys have been developing ultraviolet (UV), blue, green, red, and infrared (IR) micro LEDs based on this technology, and have now expanded its application to include white light.
Fascinating results nonetheless even discounting AI use. Having half the price is insane, also 10.54 million seems incredibly small and 6.8 Billion is a little insane. Kinda wild to see such massive growth expected in such short amount of time.
> > optical communication for artificial intelligence (AI) data transmission.
> if the Company is suggesting it out of pure hype of AI mania.
IMHO, this is pretty transparently r&d for better? data transmission attached to the trend of the day that does a lot of data transmission. Where better is higher bandwidth, lower cost, etc.
AI is the current trendy thing, but better data transmission will always have applications.
I remember attending a "pitch night," at a local incubator, about nine or ten years ago, when crypto was the new hotness.
One of the pitches was for a fairly good nonprofit service. I thought it was a good idea. Sort of a "help people that help people" thing. I can dig that.
At the very end of the pitch, the last thing the young lady said, was "And we're looking at implementing blockchain technology in our service."
I don't remember exactly what the service was, but it clearly had no applications for distributed-key tech.
I think it probably cost her the backing. No one was fooled. I think someone told her that she had to mention blockchain, somewhere.
Seems like pretty good for TV backlighting?
The article is riddled with AI errors (for example, the company's name is Viosys, not Biosys).
Looks like the innovation here is the multi-wavelength LED, some kind of multiple-quantum-well thing maybe?
Yikes. We've changed the URL from https://www.ajupress.com/view/20261028171670308 (and banned that site). I replaced it with the article that Google returns for the title, which looks like it might be the original source, or at least closer to it.
Might want to consider not doing that.
See also the other comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50328023 V/F doesn't really exist in Korean and B equivalent in latin character/ English sound gets used instead.
And many Korean legitimate news sites use AI to translate their articles to English (and other languages).
Never heard of Ajupress, but they seem legitimate based on short research. More than this semi conductor today site I'd say. The news site being Korean, would think they're way more likely to be the original source, which then got picked up by the semi conductor site.
This is their original article, in Korean, if you prefer original sources, in their respective language: https://www.ajunews.com/view/20261028171303299
Fwiw korean doesnt have a ‘V’ sound/character at all, and the V/B switch is quite common on Korean words that come from English. For example, “video” in Korean gets written with ㅂ at the start, and sounds more like “bideo”. And the same character is used in the Korean/Hangul version of their written company name.
Yeah, pronounced in korean it definitely is more similar to Biosys than Viosys. But since they have written it as Viosys in all english documentation and websites it is very suspect that the article writer would misspell it like that. So probably AI translating a korean source or something, but AI also does these mistakes much less often these days.
Seems the AI translation changed the name a bit as it is Seoul Viosys, at least according to their website https://www.seoulviosys.com/en