SUMITOMI SAID it has started to mass produce two inch low dislocation gallium nitride (GaN) substrates, an essential component to violet lasers for use in Blu-Ray and Advanced Optical Disc machines. The company said it is now producing 200 of these substrates a month but will step up production of the parts to 500 by October.
While ordinary DVD players normally use red lasers, which rely on gallium arsenide (GaAs) as the light source for reading and writing date, Sumitomi said that next generation optical disc components are needed to record and playback digital terrestrial HDTV content. Future products, including the Sony Blu-Ray player, have over five time the capacity of red laser based players, the company said.