Alongside this year’s Silicon Gorge: Autumn Edition we’re publishing profiles of a few of the companies that have made it through to the heats. Up next is Kubos Semiconductors – check out the full list of winners here!
Answering our questions today is Founder Caroline O’Brien (pictured below).
1. What does your company do?
Kubos Semiconductors is developing an exciting new material that will revolutionise LEDs.
Our unique technology solves a problem the LED industry has wrestled with for years known as the “Green Gap” by unlocking huge energy savings and delivering reductions in the carbon impact of lighting and displays.
2. What problem are you trying to solve?
In LED technology today, white light LEDs are produced by using a blue LED with a yellow phosphor coating, this is not only inefficient but doesn’t mimic daylight very accurately (think, cool blue hues or warm candlelight glows!).
The most efficient way to produce white light is through a colour mixed (Red, Green, Blue LED solution), but due to inefficiencies in Green LEDs, this hasn’t been possible until now.
In addition, we can extend the technology into the red wavelengths and solve a scaling down issue for red LEDs to microLEDs (and thereby enabling a native red microLED solution) for displays.
3. What makes your solution unique?
Kubos changes the crystal structure of the conventional material used in LEDs, to eliminate internal electric fields that causes these inefficiencies. This technology has never before been manufactured on standard equipment in a commercial environment.
4. What are you most proud of so far?
Technically we can demonstrate green and amber LEDs and can show the technology solves the inefficiency problem exhibited in the market by existing LEDs.
We manufacture these devices on standard commercially available equipment, similar to the equipment used by the LED manufacturers.
We are excited to advise that Kubos has recently appointed Dr Valerie Berryman-Bousquet as our VP of Development.
She has more than 20 years of experience developing semiconductors-based LED, LASER and optical systems for Sharp Laboratories in Europe and holds a PhD in physics specializing in epitaxy of II-VI semiconductors.
She played a key role in the development of the first blue laser based on GaN semiconductor and has led R&D teams delivering new LED and laser device technologies for applications in lighting and displays while securing over 30 patents.
5. How much are you raising and what do you want to use investment for?
£2.5 million, to build the technical team, further develop the technology (targeting >20% efficiency) and secure an LOI from an LED manufacturer for licensing.
6. What tools/people/services/
Grant funding from BEIS and IUK business support.
7. Where can we find out more about you?
Our website here, or our LinkedIn here.
