Dow Electronic Materials Expands LED Technologies Portfolio
PHILADELPHIA -- Dow Electronic Materials, a business unit of Midland-based Dow Chemical Co. (NYSE:DOW) announced its acquisition of Lightscape Materials Inc., a spin-off of SRI International. Lightscape Materials is a private, U.S.-based research company with intellectual property in specialty phosphor technology.
Major Lightscape Materials' investors included Wisepower, a Korean company, and Silicon-Valley based SRI International.
The investment enables Dow to add phosphor technology to the company's existing LED technologies portfolio.
"The novel phosphor compositions developed by Lightscape Materials enable improved quality, reliability and output color of LED light-based systems," said Leo Linehan, global general manager for Dow Electronic Materials' Growth Technologies business. "We look forward to helping customers incorporate these advanced phosphors into their processes, while providing the local service, support and supply they have come to expect from Dow. We are equally pleased to have the expertise of Lightscape co-founders Gerard Frederickson and Yongchi Tian as part of our LED Technologies team."
Phosphors are used in LED lighting applications where color quality is a key performance attribute, such as in backlights for LCD displays and in residential, workplace and retail illumination. They enable the LED to create a wide spectrum of white light, with the color tuned for the desired application. Linehan says the ongoing development of phosphor compositions is particularly important as applications become more sophisticated and consumers' expectations for color quality increase.
In October 2011, Dow announced the formation of a new LED Technologies business segment to capture current and future demand for LEDs in the solid-state lighting market. In addition to the newly added phosphor materials, Dow's portfolio includes metalorganic CVD precursors, which are used to make the active light-emitting areas in LEDs, as well as photoresists, related ancillaries for lithographic processing, metallization processes for electroplating, and pads and slurries for CMP -- all of which are used to manufacture LEDs.
Dow Electronic Materials has manufacturing and research facilities in the U.S., Europe, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
More at www.dow.com.
