PERFORMANCE
OF
COMPLETED
PROJECTS
STATUS REPORT
NUMBER 1
NIST SPECIAL PUBLICATION 950-1
Economic Assessment Office
Advanced Technology Program
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899
William F. Long
Business Performance Research Associates, Inc.
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
March 1999
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Executive Summary
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 - Overview of Completed Projects
Characteristics
of the Projects
Timeline of Expected ATP Project
Activities and Impacts
Gains in Technical Knowledge
Dissemination of New Knowledge
Commercialization of the New Technology
Broad-Based Economic Benefits
CHAPTER 2 - Biotechnology
Aastrom
Biosciences, Inc.
Aphios Corporation
Molecular Simulations, Inc.
Thermo Trilogy Corporation
Tissue Engineering, Inc.
CHAPTER 3 - Chemicals and Chemical Processing
BioTraces,
Inc.
CHAPTER 4 - Discrete Manufacturing
Auto
Body Consortium (Joint Venture)
HelpMate Robotics, Inc.
PreAmp Consortium (Joint Venture)
Saginaw Machine Systems, Inc.
CHAPTER 5 - Electronics
Accuwave
Corporation
AstroPower, Inc.
Cree Research, Inc.
Cynosure, Inc.
Diamond Semiconductor Group, LLC
FSI International, Inc.
Galileo Corporation
Hampshire Instruments, Inc. (Joint Venture)
Illinois Superconductor Corporation
Light Age, Inc.
Lucent Technologies, Inc.
Multi-Film Venture (Joint Venture)
Nonvolatile Electronics, Inc.
Spire Corporation
Thomas Electronics, Inc.
CHAPTER 6 - Energy and Environment
American
Superconductor Corporation
Armstrong World Industries, Inc.
E.I. duPont de Nemours & Company
Michigan Molecular Institute
CHAPTER 7 - Information, Computers, and Communications
Communication Intelligence
Corporation #1
Communication Intelligence Corporation #2
Engineering Animation, Inc.
ETOM Technologies, Inc.
Mathematical Technologies, Inc.
Torrent Systems, Inc.
CHAPTER 8 - Materials
AlliedSignal, Inc.
Geltech Incorporated
IBM Corporation
APPENDICES
Appendix
A: Development of New Knowledge and Early Commercial Products
and Processes
Appendix
B: Terminated Projects
END NOTES
End Notes
Click here
for PDF version of report.
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AstroPower, Inc.
Manufacturing Technology for High-Performance Optoelectronic
Devices
| Optoelectronic devices
- from light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells to lasers
and detectors - are abundant in everyday life. Millions of LEDs
are used in automobile dashboards and consumer electronic products
(clocks, radios, VCRs, CD players, coffee brewers and microwave
ovens), as well as in commercial and industrial products such
as fax machines, copiers and printers. |
LEDs That are Four
Times as Bright
Although LEDs are used in many applications
where digital readout is needed, they have limitations. They do
not emit much light, so they cannot be seen at a distance. If they
produced really bright light, LEDs would be even more widely used
than they are already. This ATP project with AstroPower, a small
Delaware company incorporated in 1989, developed a new approach
to production-scale liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE). The company has
fabricated LEDs in a way that significantly increases, by a factor
of four, the brightness of the light they emit.
A large area solar grade silicon sheet emerging from a silicon
growth reactor which incorporates new ATP-funded technology.
A New Approach
LPE is a widely used technique that
involves melting a semiconductor material and letting it crystallize
on a substrate. AstroPower's novel enhancement, the first technical
goal of the project, involved the use of a thermal gradient that
promotes the growth of the epitaxial layer laterally much faster
than vertically from the substrate. Company researchers made significant
advances in understanding growth processes for compound semiconductor
materials and in applying LPE to lateral growth over buried reflectors
and other components. The technology can be used for volume production
of low-cost compound semiconductor devices - those made from a compound
of elements, such as gallium arsenide, rather than a single element.
AstroPower's second technical goal
was to develop the technology to automate the new LPE growth process
in integrated factory-scale fabrication equipment. Company researchers
succeeded in designing and assembling a modular prototype production
growth system that has already significantly shortened production
scale-up times for currently fabricated products, as well as for
potential products under consideration by customers.
Market Developments
Upset Initial Commercialization Plans
Commercialization of the enhanced compound
semiconductor devices in high volumes has not yet happened. An initial
goal, to produce high volumes of red LEDs, has been stymied by market
developments. The Japanese have come to dominate the market for
red LEDs, which have become a commodity product. Although AstroPower
has a technical advantage in producing the devices, the value of
this market to the company is quite small, since the cost of entering
the market is too high to make such a venture profitable.
Use of the Technology
for Current Product Lines
Knowledge developed in the ATP-funded
project, especially advances in understanding epitaxy technology,
has proven useful across all company production activities, AstroPower
officials say. They report that the company's product lines have
all grown rapidly in recent years, and they attribute much of the
growth to the ATP project. All of AstroPower's compound semiconductor-based
products incorporate epitaxial growth in their fabrication. This
includes their flagship product, the Silicon-Film(tm) solar cell.
Silicon-Film(tm) is a continuous production process to manufacture
crystalline silicon sheets and layers.
Cross-sectional photomicrograph of a light emitting diode showing
device active layers and burried mirror overgrowth.
Shortened Production
Scale-Up Times
The success of the ATP-funded project
ensures that new and innovative optoelectronic devices will have
significantly shorter production scale-up times than were possible
before the project. The establishment of a technology that permits
low-cost, high-throughput synthesis of compound semiconductor structures
is potentially useful for many optoelectronic device products. It
can be used, for example, in making specialty devices on a job-order
basis using gallium arsenide, gallium arsenide-on-silicon, indium
phosphorus and a host of other unexplored alloys. These devices
are used in the fabrication of common products like detectors, solar
cells, sensors and light-emitting products. The new technology can
also be used in the production of highly sophisticated devices such
as vertical cavity surface emitting lasers and resonant optical
cavity detectors with back reflectors.
AstroPower intends to incorporate this
technology in a number of breakthrough devices that it can produce
in sufficiently large quantities when appropriate market size has
been achieved. Two significant applications are nearing product
introduction. The first is combustion sensors, based on gallium
phosphorus compounds, that can be used for flame control in internal
combustion engines and utility burners. The second is avalanche
photodiodes and detectors, based on indium-gallium-arsenic-antimony
and indium-arsenic-antimony-phosphide compounds, that can be used
for light direction and range instruments, collision avoidance,
atmospheric gas measurements, weather prediction, spectroscopy,
blood gas analysis and noninvasive medical analysis. These two products
are currently in pilot production and are being tested by NASA,
the Air Force and industrial companies.
Company Growth
At the beginning of the ATP project
in 1992, AstroPower had annual product sales of $1 million. By 1997,
sales had grown to $16 million. And in February 1998, AstroPower
successfully conducted an initial public offering of stock, raising
$16.7 million.
AstroPower is convinced that had it
not conducted the ATP-funded project, its growth experience (as
measured by product sales) would have been set back by three years,
the length of the ATP project. This belief is based on the use of
improved epitaxial growth technology across all of its product lines,
its application of manufacturing automation processes to all of
its manufacturing operations, and to the overgrowth of semiconductor
materials on dissimilar substrates as well as on mirrors, insulators,
and conducting planes. Without the ATP funds, AstroPower says it
would not have carried out the project.
Potential Large Economywide
Benefits
AstroPower noted at the beginning of
its ATP project in 1992 that it expected in a project like this
that products might take as long as 10 years to move from initial
technology development to new product sales. The demonstration production
facility AstroPower developed is capable of producing millions of
LEDs or other LPE-based optoelectronic devices per month. When sufficient
demand for the new products emerges, AstroPower plans to construct
an optoelectronic semiconductor chip-manufacturing facility for
new products made possible by the innovative LPE-growth technology.
Benefits are already accruing to purchasers
of the company's solar cells, which have higher quality and cost
less than they did before the ATP project. If the company succeeds
in bringing to market additional products that use the new technology,
even more benefits will accrue to its customers. Because of substantial
uncertainty about these events, it is too speculative at this time
to try to predict the magnitude of these future benefits.
PROJECT:
To develop new crystal growth methods and high-throughput manufacturing
technology for fabricating light detectors and emitters with
integrated reflecting mirrors.
Duration: 7/15/1992 to 7/14/1995
ATP number: 91-01-0142
FUNDING (in thousands)::
| ATP |
$1,423 |
47% |
| Company |
1,580 |
53% |
| Total |
$3,003 |
|
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
The company achieved the goals of the ATP project: developing
new epitaxial growth methods, as well as new processes for
plant-scale industrial production operations. Evidence of
the company's achievements are that it:
- received four patents related
to the ATP project technology;
"Columnar-Grained Polycrystalline
Solar Cell and Process of Manufacture" (No. 5,336,335: filed
10/9/1992, granted 8/9/1994)
"Hetero-Epitaxial Growth
of Non-Lattice Matched Semiconductors" (No. 5,356,509:
filed 10/16/1992, granted 10/18/1994)
"Columnar-Grained Polycrystalline
Solar Cell and Process of Manufacture" (No. 5,496,416:
filed 8/5/1994, granted 3/5/1996)
"Semiconductor Device Structures
Incorporating "Buried" Mirrors and/or "Buried" Metal Electrodes"
(No. 5,828,088: filed 9/5/1996, granted 10/27/1998)
- demonstrated the application
of the new epitaxial production technology to optoelectronic
device structures that have integrated reflecting mirrors
for enhancing light output (an ultrabright light-emitting
diode (LED) with buried reflectors), achieving a fourfold
increase in brightness;
- completed scale-up of liquid-phase
epitaxy (LPE)-growth technology to a high-throughput, production-scale
process;
- significantly shortened production
scale-up times for specific products, compared with previous
manufacturing processes;
- constructed a demonstration
production facility to implement the technology; and
- conducted an initial public
offering of stock in February 1998, raising $16.7 million.
COMMERCIALIZATION STATUS:
Direct commercialization of ultrabright red LEDs, a proposed
initial goal of the project, did not occur, mainly due to
economic and market developments. Knowledge of new crystal
growth methods acquired during this project contributed, however,
to the enhancement of fabrication methods for the company's
Silicon-Film(tm) solar cell and for other compound semiconductor
devices.
OUTLOOK:
AstroPower has applied the ATP-funded crystal growth technology
to its current manufacturing processes, improving productivity
and lowering costs. It also plans to use the technology for
several breakthrough devices when appropriate market size
has been achieved; if such markets develop substantially,
the outlook is promising. Two significant products that are
nearing introduction are combustion sensors based on gallium-phosphorus
compounds, and avalanche photodiodes and detectors based on
indium-gallium-arsenic-antimony compounds.
COMPANY:
AstroPower, Inc.
Solar Park, 461 Wyoming Road
Newark, DE 19716-2000
Contact: James B. McNeely
Phone: (302) 366-0400
Number of employees:
86 at project start; 160 at the end of 1997
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Date created: March
1999
Last updated:
April 12, 2005
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