TAOYUAN, TAIWAN—Arima Optoelectronics announced plans to spin off its light-emitting diode (LED) lighting business in 2008 and has not ruled out the possibility of a strategic alliance with other technology companies. Company sales have steadily decreased in 2007, from a 32% increase in January year-over-year sales to a 21% decrease in October. Although company executives have not yet made a final decision on the spin-off, they have hope that the spin-off would give the company more flexibility with its upstream and downstream manufacturers.
In further developments, Arima was the first to order a new reactor, the AIX 2800G4-R, for aluminum gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP) metal-organic chemical-vapor-deposition (MOCVD) from Aixtron (Aachen, Germany). It will reportedly be installed at Arima’s cleanrooms in Taoyuan, Taiwan. According to Aixtron, Arima will qualify the device for high-volume production of ultrahigh-brightness (UHB) red, orange, and yellow LEDs. The reactor, which has a high-throughput design, has an automated wafer handler for 60 x 2-inch or 15 x 4-inch wafers. Arima’s president, P.J. Wang, said, “We are looking very much forward to receiving this new machine for the production of our UHB LEDs. Its new features will provide us with large production capacity at a high number of runs per day.”