Nichia, a manufacturer of high-brightness blue and white LEDs, has started in-house production of a high-power red laser diode (LD) chip and will sell laser packaged products including this high-power red LD chip beginning in spring of 2024.

By enabling in-house production of laser diode chips for all three primary colors (RGB), a variety of customer requests can now be met. This further accelerates the development and commercialization of higher efficiency and higher output products, including laser projectors. Nichia states they have made upfront investments to ensure production capacity to meet the anticipated strong demand.

RGB Laser projectors which utilize the three primary colors of Red, Green, and Blue have the advantage of a much wider color reproduction range, as well as the ability to achieve high brightness while maintaining compact size and high efficiency. In recent years, the demand for such projectors has been rapidly increasing, not only for digital cinema projectors, but also for pico and personal projectors for consumers. These consumer applications include Ultra-Short Throw projectors for  laser TV and small smart projectors which stream and project content.

Nichia will start selling Laser Diode (LD) packages utilizing its in-house manufactured red LD chips beginning in spring of 2024. Nichia’s QuaLas™ RGB is an example of an LD product with multiple RGB LD chips densely mounted in one small package. It will be one of Nichia’s main products with in-house red LD chips. The QuaLas™ optical output power in each RGB color is as follows – 8.3W for blue (wavelength: typ. 465nm), 4.8W for green (wavelength: typ. 525nm), and 10.0W for red (wavelength: typ. 643nm).

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