10 June 2011

DOE offering $14.8m funding for eight solid-state lighting projects 

The National Energy Technology Laboratory, on behalf of the US Department of Energy (DOE), has announced the competitive selection of eight projects in response to solid-state lighting (SSL) Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) for Core Technology Research, Product Development, and US Manufacturing. Total DOE funding is about $14.8m. Industry cost share is more than $4m, bringing the total project value to nearly $19m.

This is the seventh round of DOE SSL funding for Core Technology Research and Product Development, and the second for US Manufacturing.

The selected projects are part of the DOE initiative to accelerate the adoption of SSL technology including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) through improvements that reduce costs and enhance product quality and performance. The projects are expected to contribute significantly to the goal of the SSL program, which is, by 2025, to “develop advanced solid-state lighting technologies that, compared to conventional lighting technologies, are much more energy efficient, longer lasting, and cost competitive by targeting a product system efficiency of 50% with lighting that accurately reproduces sunlight spectrum”. The projects are also intended to play a key role in encouraging US-based manufacturing of SSL technologies, creating jobs, and promoting America's role as a global leader in energy efficiency.

The two US Manufacturing projects are focused on achieving significant cost reductions and enhanced quality through improvements in manufacturing equipment, processes, or monitoring techniques, addressing the technical challenges that must be overcome to make LEDs and OLEDs cost-competitive with other lighting options. Total US Manufacturing project funding is $8.9m ($6.9m from the DOE and $1m each from the two participants providing 22% as cost-share). The DOE funding, participants and projects are:

• $4m to Veeco Process Equipment Inc of Goleta, CA (a subsidiary of Veeco Instruments Inc of Plainview, NY) for ‘Development of Production PVD-AlN Buffer Layer System and Processes to Reduce Epitaxy Costs and Increase LED Efficiency’, which aims to enable a 60% reduction in epitaxy manufacturing costs by introducing a high-productivity reactive sputtering system and an effective sputtered aluminium nitride (AlN) buffer/nucleation layer process.

• $2.9m to Moser Baer Technologies Inc of Canandaigua, NY (the US-based subsidiary of Moser Baer India, Ltd) ‘Process and Product Yield Improvements for Low-Cost Manufacturing of OLEDs’, which seeks to reduce the cost of manufacturing OLED lighting panels at the firm's 150mm x 150mm pilot manufacturing by providing a path to improved yield and widened manufacturing process windows at all stages of the OLED device fabrication (demonstrating these yield improvement technologies in a manufacturing environment).

The two Product Development projects are focused on the development or improvement of commercially viable SSL materials, devices, or systems with the cost and performance parameters necessary for successful market introduction. Total Product Development project funding is $4.6m ($3.6m from the DOE and $1m from participants providing 22% as cost-share). The DOE funding, participants and projects are:

• $1.6m to Cree Inc in Goleta, CA for ‘High Efficiency Integrated Package’, which aims to investigate various optical, thermal, and phosphor integration trade-offs in their high-brightness package design and fabrication, enabling high-efficacy warm-white LED packages with efficacies of 128lm/W at a correlated color temperature (CCT) of 3000K and a color rendering index value (CRI) >85.

• $2m to Philips Lumileds Lighting Co LLC of San Jose, CA for ‘High Power Warm White Hybrid LED Package for Illumination’, which seeks to make use of multi-junction high-voltage low-current (HVLC) LED designs. The drive voltage of the HVLC LED array will be 100–200V, which will simplify driver requirements, improve driver efficiency by up to 5%, and reduce system cost. The proposed warm-white LED package will deliver illumination-grade light, have a CCT range of 2700–3500K, CRI of 80, 650lm output, and an efficacy of 130lm/W for hot operation (a junction temperature of 85°C).

The four Core Technology Research projects are expected to fill key technology gaps in LED and OLED development, improve scientific knowledge, and provide performance data (all critical to the widespread deployment of solid-state lighting for general lighting purposes). Total Core Technology Research project funding is $5.5m ($4.3m from the DOE and $1.2m from participants providing 21% as cost-share). The DOE funding, participants and projects are:

• $0.68m to Soraa Inc of Goleta, CA for ‘Light Emitting Diodes on Semipolar Bulk GaN Substrate with IQE >80% at 150A/cm2 and 100C’, which seeks to develop high-efficiency semi-polar GaN-based LEDs for high-current-density, high-temperature operation (improvements at the device level should enable cost-effective solid-state white-light sources with 150lm/W efficacy).

• $1.25m to University of Rochester for ‘Light Extraction from OLEDs Using Plasmonic Nanoparticle Layers to Suppress Total Internal Reflection’, which aims to increase the efficiency of OLEDs by improving light extraction efficiency to 70% via use of a silver nanoparticle scattering layer.

• $0.66m to Arizona State University (ASU) for ‘High Efficiency and Stable White OLED Using a Single Emitter’, which seeks to demonstrate an efficient and stable white OLED using a single emitter on a planar glass substrate with a luminous efficacy of 50lm/W, and operational lifetime of 10,000 hours at a brightness of 1000 candelas per meter.

• $1.7m to Research Triangle Institute for ‘Solid-State Lighting Luminaire Reliability Model’, which seeks to develop and validate a reliability model and accelerated life testing (ALT) methodologies for predicting the lifetime of integrated SSL luminaires (the ultimate outcome will be a reliability prediction tool for SSL luminaires and new ALT methodologies for evaluating the system performance of luminaires in less than 3000 hours of testing).

The six projects that fall under Core Technology Research and Product Development are covered under the SSL Exceptional Circumstances Determination issued by DOE in June 2004.

All projects are award selections, and final details are subject to negotiations.

See related items:

DOE selects SSL Core Technology, Product Development, and Manufacturing projects for $37.8m funding

DOE selects projects for Round 5 SSL Core Technology and Product Development funding

Tags: DOE SSL funding LEDs

Visit: www.ssl.energy.gov