20 September 2012

Plessey in the hunt for a British Engineering Excellence Award

UK-based Plessey Semiconductors Ltd has been shortlisted in the Electronics Product Category of the British Engineering Excellence Awards 2012, for its new MAGIC (MAnufactured on Gan ICs) High Brightness LED (HB-LED) products. The winners will be announced on Thursday 25 October 2012 at an awards ceremony in London.

Barry Dennington, COO, Plessey Semiconductors, said: "Following on from a range of awards for our EPIC products, this is the first nomination for Plessey's new range of MAGIC HB-LEDs. The Plessey business model of bringing unique, disruptive technologies to the world market is working. We have a British semiconductor manufacturing facility which gives us the ability to create bespoke production capabilities for our products. We can, therefore, optimise and fine tune process technologies and products to rapidly bring new solutions to market. Plessey has a long history of developing high margin, unique and innovative products and we are actively working to add yet more to our portfolio."

Plessey’s MAGIC HB-LED products will be made in a high volume, semiconductor production facility on standard silicon substrates, rather than on the more expensive sapphire or silicon carbide substrates. The firm’s technology uses gallium nitride (GaN) on 6-inch silicon substrates, which will be manufactured at its Plymouth facility. It uses a much thinner GaN layer at only 2.5µm compared to 6 to 8µm in other GaN on Si technologies. This means less deposition time, so that the firm can do multiple production cycles in 24 hours to achieve higher throughputs and lower costs.

For its next generation products, Plessey intends to integrate its MAGIC HB-LED products with its EPIC sensor technology to provide smart lighting solutions for even greater energy savings and carbon footprint reductions.

Tags: Plessey GaN GaN-on-Si LEDs

Visit: www.plesseysemiconductors.com