Seren’s Green Star is Rising

We share relevant third party stories on our website. This release was written and issued by Seren Photonics.

Seren Photonics, the Welsh based developer of new materials enabling the next generation of light emitting diodes (“LEDs”) has successfully completed the first tranche of a £1m investment round.

The funding round included £250,000 from the Development Bank of Wales with matching investment from private investors.

The funds will be used to continue the manufacturing scale-up of its template technology along with the further development of green LEDs. The demand for green LEDs is driven by increasing demand for microLED display applications, where each pixel is represented by an individual red, green or blue microLED. Whereas individual red and blue LED efficiencies are already in the 60%-70% range, green LEDs still remain at <20%. Poor efficiency results in increased power consumption and sometimes the need for additional green LED pixels which also acts to reduce overall screen resolution as well as increase cost.

The overall market for next generation displays using microLEDs is vast, with an estimated value of between $30B and $40B should micro-LEDs become the display technology of choice. Applications include large, high-resolution indoor displays, 4k and 8k TVs, Augmented reality and virtual reality headsets, automotive head up displays, smartphones and wearables.

Commenting on the investment, Dr. Bedwyr Humphreys, Seren’s Chief Development Officer explained: “Efficient green LEDs are the missing link to enabling new applications and improving existing ones.  Seren’s new material will be significantly more colour stable and enabling an order of magnitude higher switching speeds and greatly improved efficiency”. 

He further added: “This is a truly versatile technology, having the potential for improving efficiency in high brightness blue LEDs, enhancing the performance of longer wavelength LEDs and enabling high speed LED-based communication systems such as visible light communication (LiFi) as well as short range plastic optical fiber communication.”

Commenting on the recent funding round Steve Smith, Technology Ventures Director at the Development Bank of Wales said: “Seren Photonics continues to make excellent progress and we’re delighted to continue our support for this innovative technology and to help create a sustainable compound semiconductor ecosystem in Wales.

“The high level of interest for this technology in next-generation displays and high speed communication endorses the importance of Seren’s technology enabling leading edge LED performance”.