GT Solar to supply sapphire material to Tera Xtal Technology

MERRIMACK, USA: GT Solar International Inc., a global provider of polysilicon production technology, sapphire and silicon crystalline growth systems, and materials for the LED and other specialty markets, announced that it has signed an agreement with leading Taiwanese LED wafer manufacturer, Tera Xtal Technology Corp., to supply Tera Xtal sapphire cores for increasing their production of epitaxial-ready LED wafers.

“We are increasing our volume of epi-ready wafers to meet rising customer demand,” said Steven Liu, president of Tera Xtal. “We have had a successful, long-standing relationship with Crystal Systems, now GT Solar, and have come to rely on their ability to provide us with LED sapphire material that meets our high standards for quality. We look forward to continuing our relationship with GT Solar into the future.”

“We are pleased that Tera Xtal has selected GT Solar to provide them with LED sapphire material to meet their increased production needs,” said Tom Gutierrez, president and CEO of GT Solar. “Our ability to supply sapphire cores to a leading LED industry player such as Tera Xtal not only demonstrates the quality of the sapphire produced by GT’s proprietary Advanced Sapphire Furnaces but also provides support to our expanding universe of equipment customers as they ramp into production over the coming year.”

GT’s new sapphire production facility increases the availability of high quality sapphire material for its LED and specialty market sapphire customers. Initially, material allocation will satisfy both LED and specialty market customers, but long term, as its equipment customers ramp into high volume production, GT expects that the majority of its sapphire production to be allocated to meet new specialty market growth in areas such as high energy lasers, medical devices, and applications requiring large area substrates for the aerospace and defense industries.