News

1 August 2006

 

Australian GaN-on-glass spin-off plans IPO to raise $4.6m

BluGlass Ltd, which spun off from the III-nitride department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia in October 2005, has lodged a prospectus with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for an initial
public offering of shares to raise AUS$6m (US$4.6m), plus up to a further AUS$3m (US$2.3m) in oversubscriptions, prior to listing on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) on 7 September. The offer closes on 25 August.

"The majority of the funds raised will be used to build a pilot manufacturing plant in Sydney to fabricate gallium nitride material and devices in order to demonstrate the technology and facilitate licensing," says chief executive officer David Jordan. BluGlass claims its technology has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of manufacturing gallium nitride.

Compared to typical current commercial MOCVD-based techniques for fabricating GaN materials and devices on sapphire or silicon carbide wafers at temperatures above 950°C, BluGlass' technology does not use highly toxic ammonia gas and uses process temperatures of 500­700ºC, making it compatible with glass, silicon and other lower-cost substrates, the company claims.

The characteristics of the process and research results suggest that it is scalable to larger (8-inch or greater) wafer sizes, beyond current limits for GaN on sapphire and silicon carbide, says BluGlass, enabling substantial
improvement in production efficiencies. The process could substantially reduce production costs for devices such as blue LEDs and lasers, it adds.

The company has demonstrated its technology on 2-inch substrates by fabricating a GaN LED at temperatures below 700°C. Researchers are now optimising the process to improve device performance and scaling up the process to accommodate 4-inch and larger wafers to demonstrate the
scalability.


Visit: http://www.bluglass.com.au