With mounting global concern over the planet’s climate and future energy resources, increasing the efficiency and competitiveness of renewable energy and using the energy we generate more efficiently, are rapidly becoming areas of intense research activity. Sharp is committed to creating environmentally advanced technologies and products and minimizing the eco-footprint of its factories, and is a leading manufacturer of optoelectronic and photovoltaic components. Research at SLE supports this multi-billion dollar business.
Lighting is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gas emissions, causing three times the total CO2 emissions compared to aircraft. The use of light emitting diodes (LEDs) in lighting products offers a route to reduce electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Sharp has been involved in the development and commercialization of LED devices for more than thirty years and is continually advancing this technology to further expand its LED lighting business. The nitride semiconductor LEDs and nanocrystals being researched here at SLE offer the opportunity of eventually providing white lighting that is ten times more efficient than that of filament light bulbs and more than twice as efficient as long fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent lamps. Also, compared with fluorescent technologies LEDs have much longer lifetimes and do not contain any toxic mercury.
With almost fifty years of experience in photovoltaics, Sharp is a world leader in innovation and technology for solar products. Sharp has been mass producing solar cells since 1959 and today produces around one tenth of solar cells worldwide. Around the globe, demand for solar energy is growing rapidly and here at SLE we are using our extensive knowledge and experience in semiconductor material growth, fabrication and analysis to develop new solar cell concepts, and material systems, to meet that growing demand.
Further details of our current research projects can be found in the following pages. If you would like to join our team of researchers in these fields then details of current vacancies may be found in the careers section, but the advanced optoelectronic devices group is happy to receive CVs from highly motivated and talented individuals at any time.
