Seoul Viosys begins production of rare-earth-free white light emitter
- ID
- 42347
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 02 Nov 2026, 12:23 AM
- Fetched
- 03 Nov 2026, 11:55 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://www.semiconductor-today.com/news_items/2026/oct/seoul-291026.shtml
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 3.0
- Created
- 03 Nov 2026, 11:56 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
Seoul Viosys says it has started mass production of WICOP 3, a white micro-LED that produces white light from gallium nitride alone, dropping the yttrium aluminium garnet (YAG) phosphor layer that white LEDs have relied on for three decades. The first production chip measures 25µm x 10µm, emits 0.015lm of white light at roughly 100lm/W, and the company targets 200lm/W within two years; it also claims about half the manufacturing cost of a conventional white LED and no rare earths, silicone, plastics or lead frames. Seoul Viosys frames this as opening a market it expects to be tens of times larger than today's ~$10bn white LED segment, which sits inside a ~$15bn packaged LED market.
Why it matters
There is no direct action for software, AI or SaaS builders here — the numbers are all vendor claims from one opto-semiconductor maker, not independent measurement. The one thing worth tracking is the rare-earth-free angle: white LEDs are a ~$10bn slice of a ~$15bn packaged LED market, and if WICOP 3 really ships at half the manufacturing cost without YAG, rare-earth demand from lighting is a supply-chain input that shifts. Wait for third-party lumen/W efficacy measurements before treating the 100lm/W and 200lm/W-in-two-years figures as real.
Discussion angle
The 190-point HN thread is arguing about a company's own press claims: which parts of the WICOP 3 story would you actually need to see independently verified — efficacy, the 25µm x 10µm die yield, or the 'half the cost' figure — before believing a rare-earth-free white LED is a real shift?