UV LED '09

Abstract

UV business is a market of about $500 million with traditional UV lamp technology. Thanks to its compactness, lower cost of ownership and environmental friendly composition, it is expected that UV LED will replace traditional lamps and also will open the door to many new applications, especially portable ones.

In 2008, LEDs in the UV A/B spectrum were the dominant device in the sub-400nm applications. More than 90% of the UV LED market (outside of R&D) was covered by UV curing, counterfeit detection, medical and instrumentation applications requiring UV A/B sources. The remaining 10% was allocated to Air & Water purification with again a great portion of UV A-based LED source for photocatalytic air purification.

Key applications for UVA are UV curing, document/banknote verification, photocatalyst air purifier, medical phototherapy. Among those, the most dynamic and important UVA lamp market is the UV curing business where UV LED can definitely compete with traditional mercury lamps:

• Market size is big ($120M) and with growth of about +10 % due to the advantage of UV curing technology over traditional technology (speed, green coating).
• Many new players have emerged over the past 5 years at the system and LED packaging level
• The power output available has greatly increased and several Watts / cm2 will be available in 2009-2010.

There were high hopes about UVC applications (disinfection, purification market) two years ago but real applications are still missing due to significant technical and economic challenges for UV LEDs: power output, efficiency, lifetime and cost. Hence UVC players are now focusing on UVA.

The first UVC LED applications are mostly for scientific analytical instruments. It is expected that the first large-scale sales for the disinfection market will appear in 2010 on existing markets and also new Point of Use or portable applications where compactness is a key issue.

Growth of the UVC market is strongly connected to the availability of AlN bulk substrates that could theoretically multiply by 100 the LED chip optical power output. Several players expect to provide AlN wafers in volume at the end of 2009. Hence, time to market for UVC applications based on AlN would probably be in 2011-2012.

We also observe a strong trend where AlN companies are now extending their activities to UV LEDs to capture more added-value along the supply-chain. According to the high potential UVA LED business in UV curing, augmented by the growing market demand in water & air disinfection, we forecast a cumulated $250M UV LED market in 2015.

This report presents the detailed major market metrics of the current traditional UV lamp business, describing the targeted applications, the key players, the volumes and related market size of each segment. It gives the possible total accessible market for UV LED, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of this technology over the current established products. It describes the recent progress in AlN single-crystal substrates as well as the UV LED performance roadmap.

Acerde, Agilent, Air Oasis, Airwise, Aller Air, American Air & water, Aquafine, Aurora UV, Avantes, Bellcon, Bioteck, Carrier, Clearstone, CoolLED, CREE, Crystal IS, Culligan, Daikin, Dieau Edafim, Eco RX, Electrolite, espring, Eurika Forbes, Fairfield Crystal Technology, Fox Group, Fujitsu, Furukawa, Fusion, GE lighting, Giesecke & Devrient, Hangzhou Bright Group, Hanovia, Heraeus Noble light, HexaTech, Hoenle, Horiba Jobin Yvon, Hydrophoton, IST, Jenton International, Kyma, Luminus, Matsushita Electric Works Machine & Vision, Meridian design, Mitsubishi Chemical, Molecular Devices, Nanobreeze, National Biological, N-Crystals, Newport, NGK Insulator, Nichia, Nitek, Nitride Semiconductors, Nordson, NTT, Ocean optics, Opthera,OSIM, Osram, Panasonic, Perkin Elmer, Philips,Phoseon, Pressure Coolers, Ryobi, Safescan, Schimadzu, SemiLEDs, Sensor Electronic Technology, Seoul Optodevice, Shenzhen Double Power Electronics, Showa Denko, Solarc system, Stellar Net, Steril Aire, Sumitomo Electric Industry (SEI), Sumitomo Metal Industries, Summit UV, Sun LLC, Sunpure, Tana Water, TDI / Oxford Instruments, Tecan, Thermo Fischer, Toshiba, Toyoda Gosei, Trojan UV, UV Biotek, UV Craftory, UV integration technology, UV process supply, UV technik, Varian, Waterlogic International, Wedeco ITT

• Benefits of the report for UV module makers:
  • Analysis of the structure the UV LED industry supply-chain: who are the vendors?
  • UV LED perfromance roadmap: When to integrate it?
  • Description of the current and future applications that will use UV LEDs
• Benefits of the report for the UV LED devices manufacturers:
  • Analysis of the current applications and detailed analysis of the future businesses
  • Analysis of the competition from large companies to small start up
  • Volume and market size forecasts