Tongtai, Cyber Laser to Establish Laser Joint Venture in Taiwan

The Tongtai Group, a leading Taiwanese machine-tool maker, recently announced that it will cooperate with the Japanese laser-equipment maker Cyber Laser in setting up a joint venture to produce laser sources in Taiwan.

The partnership was brought together by a venture capital fund co-organized by the Industrial Technology Investment Corp. (ITIC), a unit of Taiwan's government-backed Industrial Technology Research Institute's (ITRI), and Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Capital (MUCAP).

In 2011, ITIC and MUCAP set up the fund with a total of US$15 million, naming it the Taiwan-Japan Venture Capital Fund, as a platform for the transfer of technology between Taiwan and Japan.

The proposed joint venture, tentatively named Cyber Laser Taiwan, will be located at the Contrel Technology Co.'s campus in the Southern Taiwan Science Park. When it begins volume production of machines for manufacturing femtosecond-laser sources for export in the second half of 2015, it will be Taiwan's first maker of laser sources. (Contrel was co-founded by the Tongtai Group and the then Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. in 1998 to make automated conveying systems for LCD panel production lines. )

Tongtai decided to enter into the joint venture in August last year as a means of mastering more laser source technologies. The venture will be capitalized at around NT$100 million (US$3.3 million at US$1:NT$30) initially, with Tongtai owning more than half of the equity.

ITRI executives claim that their organization has introduced a 10-12 picosecond laser and 10-9 nanosecond laser after seven years or so of development, compared with Cyber Laser's 10-15 femtosecond laser.

In addition to repairing LCD panels, femtosecond lasers are also used to process the surfaces of molds and hard industrial materials such as glass and sapphire substrates. With the market for laser processing growing sharply, the prices of femtosecond laser machines have risen to around NT$40 million (US$1.3 million) to NT$150 million (US$5 million), according to Cyber Laser. (KL)