Seoul Viosys producing white LEDs without rare earths

What happened

Seoul Semiconductor and its affiliate Seoul Viosys have begun mass production of WICOP 3, an LED which emits white light without using rare earths. The source does not state a cause beyond the fact that white LEDs have depended on rare earth materials such as yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) layered onto a blue LED chip, and Seoul Viosys announced it has broken that dependence. WICOP 3 is the third generation of the technology; the two companies had already developed and mass produced ultraviolet, blue, green, red and infrared LEDs. WICOP 3 is the world's first white opto-semiconductor to achieve white light in a micro LED smaller than 100 µm, uses neither rare earths nor package, contains none of the synthetic silicone resins, plastics and lead frames used in conventional LEDs, and costs about half as much to make as a conventional white LED. In its first mass production, a micro LED chip measuring 25 µm by 10 µm produced 0.015 lumens of white light, its chromaticity falls inside the CIE standard white region, and luminous efficacy is already close to 100 lumens per watt (lm/W); the company aims to reach 200 lm/W within two years, while a conventional 1,000 µm by 1,000 µm chip achieves 50 lumens. White LEDs make up roughly $10 billion of the $15 billion global market for packaged LEDs. Previously white chips could not go below 1,000 µm; removing rare earths makes white light possible both in large chips of 1,000 µm and above and in micro LEDs below 100 µm.

Impact and signal

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Source and time

Source: Electronics Weekly · 10/28/2026 · View original source