Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak (Part 6)

SM: Does the form factor of your technology make small projectors feasible?

AE: We would use a different chip size, which is OK because our technology allows you to use whatever chip size you want.

SM: How small can you go?

AE: There is really no limitation to going to smaller chips. You just need enough light to get a reasonable screen brightness. You need a larger chip than a normal LED.

SM: Do you foresee an integration problem with iPod or iPhone devices, which have a tremendous amount of logic contained in their chips?

AE: This is a frontier, it won’t happen this year. It is where people would like to go.

SM: I am not convinced this is a great market based on what you have described.

AE: I am not sure the industry is convinced. There are lots of opinions on how the market is going to shake out. It is heavily dependent on content. It would be a great application for us. We are participating there as well as in other projection applications.
I do want to be clear that Luminus is no longer hanging its hat on just projection.

SM: What other application areas are you looking at?

AE: We are going after the market that ate our lunch, which is LCD. They are currently using CCFL lamps, which are fluorescent lamps to illuminate the screen from the back. They want to replace those with LEDs for the usual reasons: better color, no mercury, etc. This is not new, people have been trying to replace florescent lamps with LEDs for some time. They have spent a good five years tyring to do this, but their approach has been putting 5,000 or more LEDs behind the screen to get enough light.

Our approach is to put a few LEDs along the edge and then distribute the light using a plastic light guide behind the screen. It is essentially an illuminated white panel, so we combine our RGB into that panel, which can be used to replace the fluorescent lamps. It is built into the TV design and cannot be done after market, but you will never have to replace it because it will last forever. The advantage is twofold: edge lighting is cheaper and simpler. Backlight 5,000 LED approaches have not worked because they are extremely expensive and complex. Connecting 5,000 LEDs and making sure none of them blow out is a daunting challenge.

SM: It is also an inelegant technical solution.

AE: Really, edge lighting is the way it is done. Small screens like PDAs and cell phones use edge light. There are very good reasons. It makes the form factor much nicer and reduces costs. They just have not had bright enough LEDs for large-screen televisions. That is a perfect fit for our PhlatLight technology. We have been in development on this for two years now. We are in partnership with Global Lighting Solutions, which makes the plastic wave guide. We have demonstrated 50-inch and above screens using this technology. Our future customers have been very impressed.

The key to getting to market with this technology is showing the price can be competitive with fluorescent lamps. As you can imagine, the LCD market is not tolerant of heavy premiums. We have been able to show with our technology that we can be cost competitive with fluorescent lamps. Perhaps not in the first year but by the second year, with some small premiums over the first couple of years.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak
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