MKE Eager to Foster LED Equipment Industry

Plans to set aside 50 bln won in R&D outlays for the development of LED equipment






















The government announced a plan to invest 50 billion won in R&D outlays over three years until 2011 with the goal of raising the rate of localizing light-emitting diode (LED) equipment technology to 40 percent.
Lee Seung-woo, director of the Information and Electronics Industries Division at the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), said, these days the television back light unit (BLU) market is expanding due to a surge in the demand for LED, and Korean companies' facility investments are forecast to jump to 3 trillion won by 2012, but the Korean LED equipment industry is still in its infancy, as Korea depends on Veeco of the United States and Axitron of Germany for importing the Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) equipment, key equipment for depositing thin layers of atoms onto a semiconductor wafer.
The MKE plans to develop LED equipment with its own technology and foster the LED equipment and parts industries in a bid to secure a competitive edge in the prices of LED products, Lee said.
These and other steps were contained in a comprehensive plan on the development of LED equipment, which was unveiled by the MKE on July 16 during a ceremony to declare co-prosperity among LED equipment manufacturers and client companies.
The comprehensive plan calls for the commercialization of MOCVD for the production of 6-inch EPI wafers by 2011 and the development of prototype MOCVD equipment for the production of 8-inch wafers by 2012. The E-beam process will also be automated together with the MOCVD project. The government also plans to raise the die bonder tolerance number per second in the packing process as well as develop high-speed testers.
MKE officials said the plan is designed to foster MOCVD makers ranking third and fourth in the world, which would produce cheaper Korean-made equipment, thus allowing price competitiveness of LED products.
Such client companies as LG Innotek and Samsung LED as well as equipment makers such as Jusung Engineering and ADP Engineering participated in the ceremony in which they agreed to develop and purchase low-priced, high-performance equipment.
MKE Minister Lee Youn-ho said in an opening speech, "It is necessary to work out policies to grow the front and rear industries of the LED sector at the initial stage in a bid to establish the LED industry, a key sector of new growth engines, as a breadwinner of the future, and in this regard, diverse support measures will be considered." To this end, the government plans to invest 50 billion won in the next three years in R&D outlays for the development of LED equipment technology, said Cho Seok, assistant minister of the Office of Industries at the MKE.
The Korean LED market has surged as the large demand is shifting from small-size back light units (BLUs) for such products as cell phones to large-size BLUs like TV sets.
Figures released by Strategies Unlimited and Korea Photonics Technology Institute, showed that the Korean LED materials market is predicted to shoot up from $520 million in 2008 to $670 million in 2009 and to $2.48 billion in 2010, while the global market is forecast to surge from $5.1 billion in 2008 to $5.5 billion in 2009 and $7.7 billion in 2010. nw

Representatives from Korea LED equipment manufacturers and client companies hold a ceremony in July to declare co-prosperity among producers and consumers.


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