IIRC/IIUC, GaN could only deal with UV or at most deep-ish blue, for both input and output, due to bandgap or whatever quantum reasons I don't understand. To create white light from light emitted by a GaN device, it needs to be downconverted into visible range by use of either phosphorous materials or a nanoparticle resembling them that are activated by blue light and emit its own light. On most white LEDs, this is done by that yellow goop of plastic material dabbed on top of blue LEDs.

Could this be like nanostructure based? Like nanoscale etching that messes with the light, created on top of UV LEDs?

> WICOP 3 generates white light from gallium nitride (GaN) alone.

Gallium might be a problem. "China accounted for 99% of worldwide primary low-purity gallium production. The remaining primary low-purity gallium producers outside of China included Japan and Russia. Germany, Hungary, and Kazakhstan ceased primary production in 2016, 2015, and 2013, respectively. Ukraine most likely ceased primary production in 2022. Several new gallium production projects were announced including those in Australia, Canada, Greece, Kazakhstan, and the Republic of Korea."[1]

The price of gallium has increased by a factor of 10 in the last 10 years. It's doubled since last year.[2] A huge new demand for gallium is going to be a problem.

[1] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-gallium.pd...

[2] https://strategicmetalsinvest.com/gallium-prices/

Is it just uneconomic to extract it in other countries? It seems to be a byproduct of aluminum and zinc mining, and those mines are very widespread.

> Is it just uneconomic to extract it in other countries?

Yes mostly. The West outsourced this market due to heavy environmental and financial costs of extracting it. It’s sort of the same story as for a lot of the rare earth elements.

If it was marginally economic for a time while the price was 1/10th of the current price, it must be economic now. This appears to be yet another case of China undercutting, creating a monopoly, and then jacking the prices up.

The environment concerns are the issue. If stories about China are to be believed, getting it out of the ground and onto a train isn't the hard part, it's that doing so destroys the environment and China is unique positioned to not give a shit about the environment itself or with people that live near the mine protesting and suing the government for causing cancer and going all Erin Brockovich on them.

A quick search suggests that modern gallium extraction is not particularly toxic, and is no worse than the Bayer process itself. China uses ion exchange technology that has never been successfully commercialized in the west. i.e they invested in making clean methods competitive, about 20 years ago. In fact, they have monopolized much of the ion exchange supply chain.

https://payneinstitute.mines.edu/strategic-intervention-to-r...

> China produces approximately 98% of the global gallium supply and 88% of the global germanium supply; dominance has been fueled by government intervention. Beijing mandated its rapidly expanding aluminum producers to install the capacity to extract gallium. Between 2005 and 2015, China’s production of low-purity gallium surged from 22 metric tons to 444 metric tons, a nearly 2000 percent increase. This move flooded the market and forced producers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, and Kazakhstan to shutter their operations.

Canada's is a addon to the aluminum production line, ao it might not take a whole ton to expand that production

Rio Tinto is already on it in Quebec. The pilot plant is planned to ramp up production in 2027.

https://www.riotinto.com/en/news/releases/2026/rio-tinto-adv...

Isn't GaN already the base for blue led and for all current white-ish led lighting?

Here they are somehow eliminating the need for phosphors for color conversion but they didn't say how.

I mean, if GaN is a problem we are already in a bad shape.

This is why I laugh every time somebody seriously suggests there's going to be a war with China because the West would collapse without Chinese exports. It's just not going to happen.

The problem with outsourcing all your manufacturing so you can mildly increase profits and destroy any organized labor is that whoever you outsourced it to holds you hostage.

Any talk of this is just propaganda to sell weapons and increase the "defense" budget.

So gallium is a byproduct of bauxite mining but requires some sophistication. China produces 60% of the world's aluminum. India is the second largest producer but doesn't have the infrastructure to extract gallium. That will probably change. But it is a sophisticated process so you need an entire supply chain for that too. China has that. India does not (currently).

But India would avoid the geopolitical issues of being dependent on China or Russia.

> This is why I laugh every time somebody seriously suggests there's going to be a war with China because the West would collapse without Chinese exports. It's just not going to happen.

> The problem with outsourcing all your manufacturing

Not having a war is a good thing, not a problem.

Critical dependencies on foreign countries can be problematic if those countries start doing things you don't like, for example invading Taiwan.

The Chinese government calling an event the "Peaceful Liberation of Tibet" doesn't negate many others in the world calling the same event the "Chinese invasion of Tibet".

Rinse, Repeat.

> China has not even invaded a country for centuries.

You should open a history book. Or two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo...

I find it hard to believe this comment was made in good faith.

China invaded Vietnam in 1979. In response to Vietnam invading Cambodia, to be fair. But that's still an invasion in my book.

China attempted to invade Taiwan several times last century, they just didn't have the naval capability to take even Kinmen.

They are two separate countries now, unless you think North/South Korea are the same, Russia/Ukraine, etc.

It is my understanding that mainland China is the rebel province ;)

> and destroy any organized labor

Hilariously not any organized labor, just the local group. The largest organized labor group in the history of the world is alive and well, and is headquartered in Beijing.

This was basically just a case of kicking the can down the road really hard. The can is still there, waiting for you, and you are now completely dependent on it (oh and it has nuclear weapons).

Independent labor unions are illegal in China. Are you referring to the ACFTU? That is about as much a labor union as is the 'peoples' republic of china is run by the people. The ACFTU is primarily concerned with industrial output matching state targets and not particularly concerned with worker welfare.

PRC

> This is why I laugh every time somebody seriously suggests there's going to be a war with China because the West would collapse without Chinese exports. It's just not going to happen.

Sounds like all the more reason for china to start a war.

Just having one side dependent isn't going to stop war.

Would it? India has some relations with Russia….

> This is why I laugh every time somebody seriously suggests there's going to be a war with China because the West would collapse without Chinese exports. It's just not going to happen.

This is almost the exact same argument that was used to justify economic cooperation with Russia, they’d never start a war in Europe because their economy would collapse!

Ooos.

In hindsight everything is obvious, but it was a close call and there were many moments history could have taken a different route. Sanctions were painful for russia, but so was cutting ties of a lot of industry towards russia in east germany for instance. A bit more cooperation (and maybe less US started wars as a guidance) and all would be quite different.

Thing is, it wasn't hindsight. The US had been warning Europe about the dangers of dependency on Russian energy since at least 2016 through 2-3 administrations (see my other comment for the citations).

Yes and europe was warning the US not to engage with Iraq and now Iran in the way the US did.

Also we read the warning as "don't buy from them, rather buy from us".

And it was extensivly debated in general.

That would be a lot more compelling if we didn’t already know how that story ended. I also think framing this as US-EU competition rather than the EU running its economic engine on cheap Russian fuel is misleading.

The EU kept at it with plans to expand until the war started for the second time and “someone” took it upon themselves to violently sever that link.

Neither the US, nor EU nor russia is a monolithic block. So I try to avoid black and white framing in general. But especially the US warningbefore 2014, when at the same time with surplus fracking gas, not many considered serious. Besides, while everyone was buying from the Saudis and co. So why not russia?

Now at latest by 2014 that should have changed indeed. But even then different approaches would have been possible then cutting all ties and hope this will work out better.

This is ahistorical, at least from the POV of US administrations.

I'm no fan of Donald Trump but this was one of his rare Ws. At a NATO summit in 2018, he warned Europe about the dangers of dependency on Russian energy and basically bullied Germany into building an LNG plant, something that was critical to Europe after Russia invaded Ukraine 4 years later [1].

Biden as Vice President to Obama warned Europe of the same thing in 2016 [2] regarding Nord Stream 2.

So American administrations have consistently and repeatedly warned Europe about the dangers over 6+ years. So how can anyone argue that "[Russia would] never start a war in Europe" when the US said basically that?

[1]: https://archive.ph/4K5BP

[2]: https://www.dw.com/en/biden-warns-europe-against-dependency-...

Yeah both sides of US spectrum told Europe for a decade plus, but when the entire German political class is captured by Russia, what do you even do?

What does the color look like? Producing light that falls within the white region of the CIE diagram is one thing… if it’s too yellow or too blue it could be an issue. Maybe that’s something that can be worked out over time.

The article does not explain what they use, but it seems to imply that there is no fluorescent conversion layer and the white light comes directly from the LED.

That could be done if the LED actually contains a multiple structure combining red, green and blue LEDs, but in the past such a combined LED had the disadvantage that in time the efficiency of the 3 components degraded at a different rate, which resulted in a color shift.

For now, the luminous efficiency of this LED is quite poor, unsuitable for lighting but only for indicator LEDs or display applications, but they claim that for such small LEDs even the traditional LEDs had poor efficiency and they hope to improve the efficiency later to more acceptable levels.

Indeed. Would love to see a spectrograph

Even if it's perfectly centered on a nice blackbody point, if the spectral distribution is spiky, it will still look bad in real-world usage

Looking bad isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for many applications, not even for decorative ones. Just look at the piercing bluish white LED Christmas lights that many people have put up, rather than the somewhat more expensive "warm" colored ones.

It's is usually a deal breaker if used for room lighting, rather than display lighting. Especially where food is involved. Try swapping you dining room lights for RGB.

Not sure why this is downvoted. It's simple color theory, and the whole reason the CRI measure exists.

Unfortunately, CRI or Ra, agreed upon in 1974, is more of a "how well do eight pastels look when illuminated by this light spectrum?"

CIE's R96a (1999) remains stuck in a disagreement between scientists and manufacturers. This means that lights currently specified with a CRI value are advertising an inaccurate measure of their ability to reveal the color of objects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index

Knowing even only the 1974 CRI of a light source is much better than knowing nothing about it.

A very good CRI does not guarantee a very good color reproduction, but a poor CRI guarantees a bad color reproduction.

I've seen many very new comments start out grey until someone votes for it. No idea why that is.

Ooh, cool. I'd like me some luminous concrete please. I like these order of magnitude changes in common technology -- in this case, way smaller minimum size and more efficient per square nanometer -- the use cases language is a good reminder that the innovation part ("Look! This is cool!") often (usually?) precedes the most compelling use cases.

I imagine this is like 20 years away from hitting consumer design, but I bet it'll be used for some cool stuff.

I wonder if we'll ever see nanotech xenon arc lamps.

> Seoul Biosys plans to broaden its technology applications to augmented reality (AR) displays and optical communication for artificial intelligence (AI) data transmission. They are also developing a method to transmit data using densely arranged micro LEDs around 10µm in size.

Can someone who is an expert on the topic comment about if the statement regarding AI is true and if so then by how much (and how big/small of a problem it is), or if the Company is suggesting it out of pure hype of AI mania.

> Market research firm Omdia projects that the micro LED display market revenue will grow from $10.54 million this year to approximately $6.8 billion by 2032, particularly in applications for smart glasses and ultra-small displays.

> The WICOP technology involves directly mounting LED chips onto substrates without separate wires or packaging. Seoul Semiconductor and Seoul Biosys have been developing ultraviolet (UV), blue, green, red, and infrared (IR) micro LEDs based on this technology, and have now expanded its application to include white light.

Fascinating results nonetheless even discounting AI use. Having half the price is insane, also 10.54 million seems incredibly small and 6.8 Billion is a little insane. Kinda wild to see such massive growth expected in such short amount of time.

> > optical communication for artificial intelligence (AI) data transmission.

> if the Company is suggesting it out of pure hype of AI mania.

IMHO, this is pretty transparently r&d for better? data transmission attached to the trend of the day that does a lot of data transmission. Where better is higher bandwidth, lower cost, etc.

AI is the current trendy thing, but better data transmission will always have applications.

I remember attending a "pitch night," at a local incubator, about nine or ten years ago, when crypto was the new hotness.

One of the pitches was for a fairly good nonprofit service. I thought it was a good idea. Sort of a "help people that help people" thing. I can dig that.

At the very end of the pitch, the last thing the young lady said, was "And we're looking at implementing blockchain technology in our service."

I don't remember exactly what the service was, but it clearly had no applications for distributed-key tech.

I think it probably cost her the backing. No one was fooled. I think someone told her that she had to mention blockchain, somewhere.

Seems like pretty good for TV backlighting?

The article is riddled with AI errors (for example, the company's name is Viosys, not Biosys).

Looks like the innovation here is the multi-wavelength LED, some kind of multiple-quantum-well thing maybe?

Yikes. We've changed the URL from https://www.ajupress.com/view/20261028171670308 (and banned that site). I replaced it with the article that Google returns for the title, which looks like it might be the original source, or at least closer to it.

Might want to consider not doing that.

See also the other comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50328023 V/F doesn't really exist in Korean and B equivalent in latin character/ English sound gets used instead.

And many Korean legitimate news sites use AI to translate their articles to English (and other languages).

Never heard of Ajupress, but they seem legitimate based on short research. More than this semi conductor today site I'd say. The news site being Korean, would think they're way more likely to be the original source, which then got picked up by the semi conductor site.

This is their original article, in Korean, if you prefer original sources, in their respective language: https://www.ajunews.com/view/20261028171303299

Fwiw korean doesnt have a ‘V’ sound/character at all, and the V/B switch is quite common on Korean words that come from English. For example, “video” in Korean gets written with ㅂ at the start, and sounds more like “bideo”. And the same character is used in the Korean/Hangul version of their written company name.

Yeah, pronounced in korean it definitely is more similar to Biosys than Viosys. But since they have written it as Viosys in all english documentation and websites it is very suspect that the article writer would misspell it like that. So probably AI translating a korean source or something, but AI also does these mistakes much less often these days.

Seems the AI translation changed the name a bit as it is Seoul Viosys, at least according to their website https://www.seoulviosys.com/en