Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Soraa Scaling Up For Volume Production

Goleta-based Soraa, the Khosla Ventures-backed developer of LED and laser-based lighting and projection display technology, appears to be heading for volume production on its products. The semiconductor technology startup was spun out of research at the University of California Santa Barbara, by professors Shuji Nakamura, Steve DenBaars, and Jim Speck. The news comes via one of Soraa's suppliers, Plasma-Therm Systems, which says Soraa purchased three of its plasma deposition and etch equipment systems for its wafer fabrication process, as it rapidly expands its U.S. manufacturing capacity for volume production. No details on production dates were given. Soraa has been very quiet about its product plans, only saying that it is developing products based on patented and proprietary green and blue 'direct' emission laser diodes. Founder Nakamura is well known as the inventor of the blue LED.

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