HexaTech, Inc.announced the results of an ongoing collaboration with development partner Tokuyama Corporation of Tokyo, Japan, which has demonstrated exceptional output power and dramatic internal quantum efficiency (IQE) improvements. These results raise the bar to what is possible with the technology, and enable commercially available high performance, high reliability UV-C LEDs.

By coupling HexaTech’s industry-leading low dislocation density bulk aluminum nitride (AlN) substrates, with Tokuyama’s hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) and device fabrication, Tokuyama was able to produce UV-C LEDs with over 25 mW of output power at 265 nm, and internal quantum efficiencies greater than 70%.

“This collaboration demonstrates that when combining HexaTech’s market-leading bulk substrate quality, with Tokuyama’s high quality HVPE and excellent device fabrication, breakthrough, record-setting results are possible”, noted Joe Grzyb, HexaTech CEO. “It further highlights our commitment to working with our customers to bring the best in aluminum nitride technology to market.”

“Working together with HexaTech and their substrates, Tokuyama has made great improvements in the performance of our UV-C LEDs, accelerating the process for their commercial availability “, stated Mr. Toru Kinoshita, Chief Research Engineer at Tokuyama Corporation.

Since their inception, UV-C LEDs have held the promise of a compact, highly efficient, long-life light source for sterilization and purification applications. However, most commercially available products currently struggle with limited output power, efficiency and device lifetimes. A key requirement for improving these limitations is to drive the device defect density down, for which IQE is a key measure and is critically related to the underlying bulk material quality.

“As HexaTech’s own device development has shown, using our high quality, low dislocation material, we are able to produce UV-C LEDs with record-setting reliability and lifetimes, exceeding more than 600 hours of accelerated testing, with virtually no degradation”, commented Dr. Baxter Moody, HexaTech Director of Device Development.