If manufacturing technology development efforts now underway produce even a fraction of their projected improvements in production efficiency, solid-state lighting cost per lumen should come down drastically in the next few years. Driven by the growing market opportunity, and by $23 million in funding by the US Department of Energy (DOE), semiconductor equipment makers and their device-maker partners are at work on a series of projects. Each of these aims at major 30-50% improvements in basic manufacturing cycle time, yield, and cost, in part by applying approaches learned from high-volume semiconductor production (see http://www.ledsmagazine.com/news/7/1/12).

The greater semiconductor supply chain is starting to turn serious attention to the particular needs of the HB-LED market, as almost $1billion will be invested in building and equipping device-production facilities this year, according to SEMI’s Opto/LED Fab Watch.