Nobel Advice
It has been found out that Professor Shuji Nakamura at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics with his blue LED, is acting as a technical advisor to Seoul Semiconductor.
“We invited the professor in March 2010 on a five-year contract to seek advice regarding blue and white LEDs, fluorescent substances, devices, packages and the like,” the company said on Oct. 8.
Back in 1993, professor Shuji Nakamura succeeded in developing a high-intensity blue LED based on GaN. Thirteen years later, he won the Millennium Technology Prize in Finland, too.
In the meantime, Seoul Semiconductor climbed a notch to fourth place in the yearly LED package sales ranking in July 2013 that is provided by U.S. market research firm IHS. The top three were Nichia, Osram Opto Semiconductors, and Samsung Electronics. Seoul Semiconductor was followed by Philips Lumileds.
Seoul Semiconductor has invested approximately 10 percent of its sales in R&D each year, acquiring more than 10,000 patents based on the investment. It released the world’s first LED light source by the name of Acrich that can be directly driven by AC without any AC/DC converter in 2006. In 2012, it launched the nPola, which is more than 10 times brighter than LED light sources in general.