Walking through the visiting channel of the silicon substrate LED epitaxial and chip production line of LatticePower (Jiangxi) Co., Ltd., it seems to be crossing a time and space tunnel. Listening to the director Jiang Fengyi's detailed introduction, I experienced his ten year development path of unwavering commitment to silicon substrates, and felt how Crystal Energy Optoelectronics, a company born for the industrialization of silicon substrates, continues to write the legend of the future development of silicon substrates.

Ten Years of Regretless Adherence to Silicon Substrates

In 1993, the former Jiangxi University and Jiangxi University of Technology merged to form the new Nanchang University. In the autumn of that year, Jiang Fengyi proposed to establish a material preparation laboratory to engage in research on new luminescent materials. Although the various construction funds of the school had already been allocated at that time, the school leaders still made a decisive decision to borrow 600000 yuan to build this laboratory. From then on, the research on high-tech products - blue light materials and devices - began on the red soil. Due to a serious shortage of funds and the inability to afford advanced instruments and equipment, Jiang Fengyi led a group of young people to work hard and start their own businesses, researching, designing, and assembling relevant instruments and equipment for experiments. They continuously summarized and accumulated experience from practical operation and gradually optimized research equipment, mastered many new experimental skills, and independently carried out research on the international cutting-edge topic of blue luminescent materials.

The trend is for semiconductor LED lamps to replace incandescent and fluorescent lamps. In this field, countries such as Japan and the United States have taken the lead and monopolized the semiconductor LED technology routes on sapphire and silicon carbide substrates, respectively. In this situation, the Research Center for Luminous Materials and Devices Engineering of the Ministry of Education (Nanchang University) has creatively developed a new semiconductor LED technology route - the silicon substrate semiconductor LED technology route, changing the monopoly of core technologies in this field by countries such as Japan and the United States, and rewriting the world LED history.

After more than 3000 experiments, Jiang Fengyi and his team overcame the doubts and uncertainties in the industry, unwaveringly adhering to silicon substrate technology, and finally transitioning from tracking to leapfrog. They invented a special transition layer and specific silicon surface processing technology, overcoming the huge lattice mismatch and thermal mismatch between the epitaxial layer and substrate. In the first generation of semiconductor silicon materials, Successfully prepared high-quality quantum well structured third-generation semiconductor GaN materials, and developed blue, green, and white LEDs on silicon substrates. Its luminous efficiency, reliability, and device lifespan are among the leading technical indicators in similar research, and it has taken the lead in achieving mass production of this new technology product internationally.

The cost of LED chips produced using this achievement is significantly lower than that of sapphire and silicon carbide based LED chips. This technology is a new technology that rewrites history for blue light LEDs. This achievement also produced the world's first silicon substrate LED full color display screen (with blue and green LEDs prepared on silicon substrates). This achievement won the R&D Innovation Award in the first National Semiconductor Lighting Engineering Innovation Competition in July 2006.

Industrialization Continues the Legend of Silicon Substrates

In the reality of numerous scientific research achievements struggling to find funding and unable to achieve industrialization, the silicon substrate LED technology route has attracted joint investment from five international venture capital funds. The investment of 52 million US dollars has been fully invested, and a high-tech enterprise, LatticePower (Jiangxi) Co., Ltd., has been established in Nanchang, Jiangxi, specializing in the production of silicon substrate GaN based LED epitaxial materials and chips. LatticePower has also become another development platform for the industrialization of silicon substrates, and at the same time, LatticePower continues to write the Chinese legend of silicon substrate LED epitaxial chips.

From school to enterprise, from laboratory technology to industrial production, and from researchers to enterprise managers, the collective has successfully completed its role transformation. One of the foundations for a smooth transformation is that the team is a collective that is capable of both literature and martial arts, both red and professional. Here, literature, martial arts, red, and specialty have been endowed with new connotations by them. Wen: Has solid theoretical knowledge; Wu: Proficient in hands-on experimentation; Specialized: refers to the "civil and military" function; Red: It refers to a person's ideological and moral qualities.

The second foundation for smooth transformation is the collective's long-term adherence to the "enterprise oriented" model of scientific research work. In the laboratory research stage, they established a pilot production line, integrating basic research, application development research, and pilot production, firmly locking the research goal in "industrialization"; Moving the operation mode of the enterprise to the laboratory, in addition to the R&D team, we also recruited many technical workers and conducted experimental research in three shifts. Researchers conduct experiments during the day and hand them over to technical workers according to pre programmed procedures at night. As soon as they start work the next morning, the experimental results have already been produced. This process is repeated every day in this "laboratory enterprise", which has bought valuable time for research and development work and accumulated valuable experience for industrialization.

This team has put all their efforts into the industrialization process, and in less than a year, they have built a modern enterprise with international hardware conditions on a desolate land. In less than half a year, they have achieved the original innovative achievement of mass production of silicon substrate LED materials and chips, with an annual production capacity of 3 billion silicon substrate LED chips (low power). At present, the company is developing LED chips for color TV backlighting and LED chips for street lights. The medium to long-term development goal is to become a leading enterprise in the production of high-end LED chips with international characteristics. The next research and development direction is to develop high-performance LED chips (high-power) for semiconductor lighting to enter millions of households as soon as possible.

Jiang Fengyi and his team have obtained and publicly disclosed over 50 invention patents in this field, laying an important foundation for the development of China's LED industry in terms of technological property rights. The scientific research achievement developed by the collective, "Silicon substrate GaN based LED epitaxial materials and chips," has successfully achieved industrialization internationally, which is a microcosm of China's semiconductor LED industry's development from "Made in China" to "Created in China". (Source: China Electronic News Editor: XGY)