Seoul Semiconductor ‘ends need for rare earths in white LEDs’

What happened

According to a report dated October 30, 2026, Seoul Viosys and its parent company Seoul Semiconductor announced they have developed a chip that emits white light without rare earth elements (REEs) and have begun mass producing it; the chip can be as small as 10 micrometers (µm). For three decades, white LEDs have depended on rare earth materials such as yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) layered onto a blue LED chip; previously, WICOP could make chips smaller but white light still required a package containing rare earths, so white chips could not go below 1,000 µm and white micro LEDs under 100 µm were out of reach. WICOP is the companies' package-free chip architecture, under which they have already mass produced ultraviolet, blue, green, red and infrared LEDs under 100 µm; WICOP 3 is the third generation and extends the rare-earth-free capability to white light. Per the press release, white LEDs make up roughly USD 10 billion of the USD 15 billion global market for packaged LEDs, and the company believes WICOP 3 can now replace them with a rare-earth-free technology.

Impact and signal

Affected components and suppliers

Source and time

Source: Evertiq · 10/30/2026 · View original source