Dec 3 2008
The establishing documents have been signed by Anatoly Chubais, Director General of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (RUSNANO), Mikhail Prokhorov, President of "ONEXIM Group" Ltd. and Sergey Maksin, Director General of the Ural Optical and Mechanical Plant (UOMP).
The project is aimed at creating a highly technological industrial production of a new generation lighting systems based on the gallium nitride semiconductor chips. The final product will be LED chips, LED lamps and lighting systems, the brightness of which is comparable with the best world analogues. The record low amount of defects in semiconductor layers allows the devices to work without losing effectiveness with high-density currents, enabling the good brightness to price ratio for LED chips.
The unique chip production technology was created by the founders of the German-Finnish company OptoGAN Vladislav Bougrov and Maxim Odnoblyudov who were students of the Nobel prize winner, member of the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) Zhores Alferov. The successful establishment of a new enterprise will allow to return one of the most promising projects developed by the Russian scientists back to Russia.
The total value of the Corporation’s investment into the project will reach 1 776 million rubles, 323 million rubles of which will be given in the form of a contribution to the chartered capital and 1 453 million rubles in the form of a loan. RUSNANO’s equity share in the joint company will be equal to 17%, UOMP’s share will be 33% - 1 share, ONEXIM Group’s share will be 50% + 1 share.
It is expected that the annual revenue will reach about 6 000 million rubles by 2013.
Industrial production of heterostructures (multilayer structures consisting of semiconductors with different zone structure and varying lattice parameters) will be situated in Saint-Petersburg within the special economic zone. The LED chips, lamps and lighting products assembly will be located in Yekaterinburg, on the basis of the lighting products subdivision of the Ural Optical and Mechanical Plant.
The project received a positive resolution from scientific & technical, patent, and production-technological expertise arranged by RUSNANO. The attractiveness of the project from the investment point of view was also confirmed by experts.
Development of LED lighting products is a very promising direction for investment due to high rates of market growth because of increasing consumer demand. The lighting products based on the semiconducting nanoheterostructures substitutes the traditional light sources, such as incandescent, fluorescent and other lamps. Using the LEDs will allow to reduce significantly the consumption of electric power and increase the simplicity of lighting systems’ operation. It will also free up quite an amount of power capacity.