Sharp enters blue laser production
<p>Earlier this month Tokyo-based Sharp Corp began supplying blue-violet laser diodes (emitting at a wavelength of 406nm) from its laser fab in Mihara, Hiroshima, becoming only the third volume manufacturer so far. </p><p>Previously, volume supply has been limited to MOCVD-grown blue-violet laser diodes from Japan’s Nichia Corp (estimated at several hundred thousands units per month) and Sony Corp, under a cross-licensing deal with Nichia. However, Sony is currently devoting capacity to Sony Computer Entertainment Inc’s new Playstation 3 (launched in the USA a week or so ago), planning to ship 1m units into both Japan and the USA by end-2006, before launching the PS3 in Europe next spring. This has contributed to the ongoing shortage of lasers required for the next-generation DVD player formats HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc (the format used for PS3), with Sony having postponed its Blu-ray Disc player’s July US launch indefinitely. <br/>In contrast, the Advanced Optoelectronic Devices group of Sharp Corp’s subsidiary Sharp Laboratories of Europe (SLE) of Oxford Science Park, UK in January 2004 fabricated the first InGaN blue-violet laser diode grown by MBE (which Sharp uses to produce half of all infrared and red CD/DVD lasers sold). Grown on sapphire templates, the devices operated in pulsed mode at 405nm (for Blu-ray), with a threshold voltage of 33V and a high room-temperature current density of 30kAcm-2. </p><p>In June 2005 it demonstrated the first MBE-grown blue-violet laser to operate in the necessary continuous wave (CW) mode at room temperature (for several minutes without degradation, with a threshold current density of 5.7kAcm-2 and an operating voltage of 8.6V). </p><p>At this May’s 6th International Symposium on Blue Laser and Light Emitting Diodes (ISBLLED 2006) in Montpellier, France, SLE's Valerie Bousquet reported a laser grown on free-standing substrates (produced by Japan’s Sumitomo and France’s Lumilog) with a CW lifetime extended to 3 hours (still much shorter than that of MOCVD-grown lasers in first-generation HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc players). At a drive current of 450mA and a threshold voltage of 6.5V, CW output was 14mW. </p><p>Now, Sharp says its new production GH04020A2GE blue-violet laser (which has a small diameter of 5.6mm for easy implementation in Blu-Ray Disc and players) has a maximum optical output of 20mW for read-only applications. When set to 10mW at room temperature, it ensures what Sharp claims is the industry's smallest power consumption and longest lifetime simultaneously (168mW and over 10,000 hours, respectively). </p><p>The first samples cost 10,000 yen ($85). Sharp has a start-up capacity of 150,000 units a month, but says it is ready to expand capacity depending on demand. </p><p>* Sharp says it is also developing a high-power, pulsed-wave blue laser that will output 130-210mW. </p><p>Visit: <a href="http://www.sle.sharp.co.uk">http://www.sle.sharp.co.uk</a></p>
页:
[1]