During the last years GaN-technology has proven to fulfill the requirements of solid state lighting. Lighting requirements are mainly driven by brightness, operation voltage and lifetime. Brigthness is determined by internal efficiency as well as extraction efficiency whereas the ohmic losses determining the operating voltage are dominated by series resistance and contact resistance. Both, brightness and voltage, strongly depend on the device structure as well as the chip design. SiC based [1, 2] as well as Sapphire based LEDs [3] have proven their capability for high brightness devices, still suffering from various compromises such as cost, ESD-stability, high series resistance etc.Recently OSRAM-OS has demonstrated its newly developed product line based on the so called ThinGaN(TM) technology, a true thinfilm approach that overcomes most of the compromises mentioned. The technology allows highest brightness levels at lowest operating voltage, is scalable and supports all wavelengths. The devices act as true surface en-titters with a lambertian emission pattern.

The edge diode laser, comprising exactly one body (10) of epitaxially grown material having a top surface which is transverse to the growth direction, and one of the upper surface opposite bottom surface, - on top of a structured into strips p-type contact layer (13) and a patterned in stripes n-contact layer on the bottom (14) is applied, - is applied to both the top side and on the underside of a respective heat sink (17), - which extends along the growth direction side surfaces of the body (10) are free of a heat sink, - the patterned p-type contact layer (13) and the patterned n-type contact layer (14) respectively directly on the body (10) are applied from epitaxially grown material, - the patterned p-type contact layer (13) of at least one of the following materials: chromium, platinum, gold, palladium, tungsten, lithium, silicon carbide, tantalum, zinc, and - the structured n-type contact layer (14) contains gold.

Solid state lighting has seen a rapid development over the last decade. They compete and even outperform ligth sources like incandescent bulbs and halogen lamps. LEDs are used in applications where brightness, power consumption, reliability and costs are key parameters as automotive, mobile and display applications. hi the future LEDs will also enter the market of general lighting. For all of these new applications highly efficient, scalable and cost efficient technologies are required.These targets can be matched by SiC based flip chip LEDs which enable the design of high current chips with efficiencies of up to 28 lm/W in white solderable packages. An alternative approach is the implementation of thinfilm technology for GaInN. The LED is fabricated by transferring the epilayers with laser lift off from sapphire to a GaAs host substrate. In combination with efficient surface roughening and highly reflective p-mirror metallisation an extraction efficiency of 70% and wall plug efficiency of 24% at 460nm have been shown. The chips showed 16mW @ 20mA with an Voltage of 3.2V. The technology is scalable from small size LEDs to high current Chips and is being transferred to mass production.