AIXTRON and ams OSRAM announce qualification of systems for Micro LED applications

 

AIXTRON SE (Herzogenrath, Germany), a leading provider of deposition equipment to the semiconductor industry and ams OSRAM (Premstätten, Austria), a leader in optical solutions, announced that ams OSRAM has qualified AIXTRON AIX G5+ C and G10-AsP MOCVD systems on 200mm wafers for a Micro LED application.

The MOCVD systems AIX G5+ C and the new G10-AsP from AIXTRON SE offer AIXTRON planetary technology which is paving the pathway for the next generation of high-resolution Micro LED displays. In spring 2022, ams OSRAM had announced plans to create additional manufacturing capacity in 200mm for the production of LED and Micro LED at its existing location in Malaysia. The MOCVD systems are expected to help enable volume production of Micro LED for a new generation of display applications.

“AIXTRON and ams OSRAM have a long-standing cooperation, and we are familiar with the performance and quality standards of the equipment. For an ambitious project like the development and production of Micro LED for AsP and GaN devices, we needed exactly such a partner at our side,” says Robert Feurle, Executive Vice President and Head of Business Unit Opto Semiconductors at ams OSRAM.

Dr Felix Grawert, CEO and President of AIXTRON SE, adds: “The G10-AsP and AIX G5+ C qualification at ams OSRAM is a very important milestone in our company’s history. ams OSRAM is a world-class LED manufacturer and perfectly positioned to enable the fundamental new technology that will come to market. We are on the verge of a technology shift away from conventional display technologies to a new type of Micro LED displays. Now, AIXTRON is entering one of the future’s growths markets that has an enormous potential, and we are doing this with a perfect partner at our side.”

Micro LED technology offers very significant advantages for display technology such as higher pixel density, longer lifetime, higher brightness, faster switching speed and a wider colour spectrum. An important benefit is also the low relative energy consumption, which qualifies Micro LED ideally for upcoming generations of smaller display-equipped consumer devices which provide a very limited space for batteries.

The production of Micro LED comes with special requirements: Micro LED volume production includes a special transfer process where multiple thousands of LED chips (arrays) of just micrometres in size are picked up and transferred. Any defect can result in dead pixels that can make an entire array useless. Hence, an almost error-free epitaxy process is necessary, minimising defects and allowing for high yield and economically viable production of Micro LED.

AIXTRON’s new G10-AsP epitaxy tool has been designed to address the specific needs of this application: It is the world's first fully automated AsP reactor offering cassette-to-cassette wafer loading as well as a cleaning mechanism based on in-situ etching. Together, these two features have a major impact on the yield performance. In addition, the AIXTRON system offers the advantages of batch reactor technology: it comes with the lowest production cost per wafer currently available in the market and the highest throughput per cleanroom area. At the same time, the new tool comes with precise flow and temperature control permitting the best material uniformities run after run.

Caption: AIXTRON’s new G10-AsP epitaxy tool is the world’s first fully automated AsP reactor offering cassette-to-cassette (C2C) wafer loading as well as a cleaning mechanism based on in-situ etching (photo: AIXTRON)