Funding success gives Seren bright future

TECHNOLOGY developed in Sheffield is to take a major step forward towards commercialisation after £475,000 was raised from investors.

The successful funding round by Seren Photonics will allow it to build pilot scale ‘high-brightness’ LEDs that use a new processing technique developed by Dr Tao Wang from the University of Sheffield.

Dr Wang’s technique doubles the light output of HB LEDs, which are used in laptops and televisions, allowing much brighter lamps to be manufactured or power consumption to be reduced.

Seren Photonics is a portfolio company of Sheffield-based university research commercialisation company Fusion IP.

Fusion IP chief executive David Baynes said: “Seren continues to make excellent progress and we are excited by the results to date.

“There is a huge potential market for their revolutionary technology and we remain confident that the light output, which is already double untreated devices, will be significantly increased as the process is optimised.”

Seren has begun discussions with three manufacturers with the LED market already estimated to be worth more than £3bn and set to more than double by 2013.

Chairman Godfrey Ainsworth said: “We have made significant progress with the development of this technology in recent months. 

“Incorporation of our process technology in to packaged pilot HB LEDs will allow us to demonstrate our product to potential manufacturing partners and early adopters from the potential customer base.  We are already engaged in discussions with these parties.”