In the LED industry, there is also a Moore's law similar to "Haitz's law" in the field of integrated circuits, which means that the price of LED will decrease to 1/10 every 10 years, and the performance will be increased by 20 times. Large size technology can reduce production costs and make its application size transition from 2 inches to higher dimensions. The large size of the ingot can reduce the loss of raw materials, 6 inch chip wafer production is 10~12 times the 2 inch wafer, however the geometric area increased 9 times only 2 inch wafer, wafer curvature decrease from the "edge effect" in the formation of more peripheral chip.
Big international factories are also starting to lay out in large size manufacturing. In Europe, the United States, Japan and Taiwan, the typical manufacturers have been moving from 4 inches to 6 inches. The Russian Monocrystal company has released C-Plane's 10 inch LED sapphire substrate material, which means that with the rapid growth of the semiconductor lighting market, the more mature sapphire substrate will go to a larger size. However, most of the small enterprises in China are still making 2 inch wafers because they do not have the technology, capital and talent for large size conversion. At present, the proportion of 6 inch round grains is relatively low. It is estimated that the ratio will increase to 30% to 40% in 2016. LG, Lumileds, OSRAM Opto and Gree will be the main suppliers of 6 inch round grains.
As the size of the sapphire substrate increases, the production process and equipment level in the upper reaches should be improved accordingly. Therefore, to overcome technological and technological difficulties will cause cost increase to some extent, but large size crystals can produce scale effect, and at the same time with the existing semiconductor manufacturing process, eventually bring the overall cost down. The trend of the whole industry to large size will reduce the cost of production and eventually expand the scope of the sapphire application. For enterprises, the explosion of LED applications will stimulate the demand for sapphire crystal rods, and the increase in the thickness of large size wafer will also stimulate the demand for materials. Therefore, in this industry trend, companies with large size sapphire generating capabilities or companies with large size distribution ahead of time will benefit.