Dow Electronic Materials Expands its LED Technologies’ Portfolio to Include Specialty Phosphor Technology

Dow Electronic Materials, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company today announced its bolt-on acquisition of Lightscape Materials, Inc., a spin-off of SRI International. Lightscape Materials is a private, US-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.” Linehan added, “We are equally pleased to have the expertise of Lightscape co-founders Gerard Frederickson and Yongchi Tian as part of our LED Technologies team.”

Wisepower CEO Gi-Ho Park said, “Dow Chemical was the ideal acquirer for Lightscape Materials. Dow’s investments in LED-related materials and their global marketing reach was a factor in our decision to choose Dow,” said Park. “Lightscape is a unique phosphor player capable of delivering novel phosphors crucial to high CRI LED packages.”

SRI Ventures Vice President Norman Winarsky, PhD said, “It is gratifying to see SRI’s technology develop into products that meet important market needs. Lightscape, the latest success in SRI’s series of spinoff ventures, is built from a strong legacy of lighting innovations that include the first color TV phosphors.”

Linehan added, “We look forward to working with SRI International and Wisepower again as the occasion arises.”

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 of 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.