BEIJING, CHINA: The increasing need of LEDs in TV backlights as well as for illumination in general promises an even bigger demand for LEDs in the future.

Wary of this growing market, existing LED manufacturers like SemiLEDs are expanding their manufacturing capacity and  other companies like TMSC and De Core Nanosemiconductor are also looking to enter the market with plans to build their first LED chip fabs.

SemiLEDs’ plans to build a fab in Foshan, in China’s Guandong province, had already been revealed by the company earlier. The company, based in Boise , Idaho, plans to manufacture LED chip wafers along with high-powered LED chips in the Foshan facility.

The foundation for the plant has been laid recently by a new company called Xurui Optoelectronics, in which SemiLEDs has invested $350 million and owns a controlling 49 per cent stake. The remaining 51 per cent is shared by six companies.

TMSC has also broken ground on its first LED fab in Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park. The leading contract IC fabrication company believes that its manufacturing expertise can be used to make LEDs as well. The President for New Businesses at TMSC, Dr. Rick Tsai, says that they will use their leadership and excellence in manufacturing semiconductors in processing, packaging and testing LED technology. 

De Core Science and Technologies, a company that produced Aluminum Indium Gallium Nitride wide-band-gap materials, has branched out as De Core Nanosemiconductors to manufacture white LEDs that are crystal-based and nano-heterostructured. The company has already come up with plans to invest around $20 billion in its LED fab in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

There have been reports of the facility being claimed to be the first semiconductor fab in India. De core has already started producing LED lighting products in another plant at Noida. The lighting operation will be supplied by the company’s new LED fab.

However, the growth of the LED market seems to guarantee the consumption of all the products manufactured at these new fabs, still leaving space for more.