Umicore Electro-Optic Materials is a business unit belonging to Umicore's Advanced Materials group. The unit focuses on customised germanium-based material solutions for infrared optics and opto-electronics applications.

The business line substrates produces dislocation free, polished and epi-ready Ge wafers in diameter ranging from 2" to 300 mm. Our wafers are the substrate of choice for III-V multijunction solar cells for space applications. Other applications include concentrator photo-voltaic systems, LEDs and thermo-photovoltaic systems.

Thanks to the close match of the lattice constant and thermal expansion coefficient of Ge and IIIV compounds, germanium is one of the materials of choice for the production of high brightness LEDs. The germanium substrate serves either as a carrier for thin film LEDs (WO 2004/068567) or as a growth substrate in various types of surface mount LEDs.