Prof. Hwung-Hweng Hwung, the Senior Executive Vice President of National
Cheng Kung University (NCKU) - Taiwan, on behalf of NCKU, signed a joint
venture agreement with a privately owned Taiwan Nitride Material Inc. led by
its chairman Mr. H.H. Chang, for the production of aluminum nitride (AlN). Both
parties agreed to invest a total of NT$ 30 million (US$ 932,000) for research
and development of AlN, a semiconductor material widely used for heat radiation
and insulation in microelectronics and optoelectronics.
NCKU will have a share right of 18% resulting from technique transfer and expects
to have a revenue of at least NT$ 100 million (US$ 3.1 million) over the next
ten years. The AlN production technique was developed by Prof. Shyan-Lung Chung
of the NCKU Department of Chemical Engineering under the support from National
Science Council (NSC) with an umbrella project, “A Study of Interdisciplinary
Platform for New Technology Commercialization, Academic-Enterprise Collaboration,
and Entrepreneurship”, supervised by the principal investigator - NCKU
SEVP Hwung-Hweng Hwung. This agreement is the first joint venture in aluminum
nitride production in Taiwan and certainly created a new way of the commercialization
in the cross field of new technologies.
The academia-industry collaboration is essential to promote industrial development
and innovation of our society. However, most universities in Taiwan emphasized
the mode of academia-industry collaboration in technology transfer in the past
few years, which often leads to a failure since no continuous R&D creation
has been put in from university. However, the new mode of academia-industry
collaboration has been reflected on the NSC-sponsored project, “A Study
of Interdisciplinary Platform for New Technology Commercialization, Academic-Enterprise
Collaboration, and Entrepreneurship”, led by NCKU SEVP Hwung. This new
mode is to establish technical, marketing, producing and financial analysis
actively, to recruit the employees with competence and to raise enough capital
to realize creative and technical commercialization. That is, academia and industry
will be close partners even after signing the agreement and finishing technology
transfer. Prof. Hwung also expects to make public announcement soon on another
joint venture, under this project, in production of aquaculture oral bacterial
vaccine formulations and copper resources recycling industry for the next 6
months.
“I have a wish. I hope to develop a product at my homeland to strengthen
the international competitiveness of local industry of my homeland. Now it is
the time for our earth with an emphasis in energy conservation and less carbon
emission. Light emitting diode (LED) provides a right solution to it. That is,
LED lighting is replacing iridescent bulbs. However, the life of LED is still
of grave concern resulted from overheating of the device. I really appreciated
the effort done by Prof. Shyan-Lung Chung on development of AlN products that
could solve this problem,” said Mr. Chang, chairman of Taiwan Nitride
Material Inc.
“In addition, Taiwan is known for its volume production of LED. The coverage
and luminescence intensity in LED lighting is increasing, and backlight modules
for LCD displays, made by LED, is prevailing. Moreover, AlN just solved the
problem in heat dissipation, frequently encountered in LED devices and the main
cause of failure to such devices, especially in lighting and large-size TV with
higher energy efficiency and less carbon emission. It also helps enhance the
competitive advantage of Taiwan's high-power LED lighting, such as street lamps
and backlight module industry. I hope this is a beginning for us as becoming
NCKU’s strategic partners, and there will be more collaborative opportunities
with each other in the future,” said Mr. Chang, chairman of Taiwan Nitride
Material Inc.
Prof. SL Chung from NCKU Chemical Engineering Department has been dedicated
to researches on AlN for so many years. Prof. Chung has developed different
techniques, for example, sintering and composite materials, in efficient production
of AlN. There have been a number of manufacturers in close cooperation with
Prof. Chung’s laboratory in order to develop or to commission test in
AlN downstream products. AlN products are becoming more and more popular, as
its production cost is reduced with these innovative inventions by Prof. SL
Chung. Even more, these innovative inventions have been protected under various
issued patents and expect to generate high revenue.
It is worth to say that this cooperation project in the case of cross-cooperation
model for the first time from technology development, technology transfer to
technology commercialization, and mass production is done by the same research
team. It can promote the continuous technological development and continuous
mass production and product testing by the newly-established company to shorten
the technology development schedule, but also to ensure that technology development
is suitable for the demand of business industry and customers.
About the project: A Study of Interdisciplinary Platform for New Technology
Commercialization, Academic-Enterprise Collaboration, and Entrepreneurship
The main objective of this project, “A Study of Interdisciplinary Platform
for New Technology Commercialization, Academic-Enterprise Collaboration, and
Entrepreneurship”, led by NCKU SEVP Hwung is to integrate the related
sources of academia-industry, including the NCKU Research and Service Headquarter
(RSH) and the NCKU Technology Licensing and Business Incubation Center (TLBIC).
They also integrated six innovative sub-projects to cooperate with industry
actively and to drive incubation of novel invention, to give balance of capital
and innovative group planning and to establish a new company to realize the
commercialization of creative technology. These six project are “aquaculture
oral bacterial vaccine formulations research sub-research project”, “health
development of Chinese herbal medicine research project”, “copper
loop resource industries sub-research project”, “biosurfactant products
sub-research project”, “aluminum nitride production and development
of innovative technologies sub-research project” and “aluminum nitride
electrical substrates metallization sub-research project”.
Innovative technological commercialization platform is aimed to establish a
new company from technological development to innovative incubation as a series
of service differed from the past academic innovation which is follow-up the
industry market development and operational management by technology transfer.
However, it is easy to break down the project due to technical fail-embracing
in promoting the process of convergence.
The technological value evaluation of innovative technologies in sub-projects
of “A Study of Interdisciplinary Platform for New Technology Commercialization,
Academic-Enterprise Collaboration, and Entrepreneurship” will come with
a relevant market demand, marketing and manufacturing feasibility and cost-benefit
assessment. They will invite manufacturers to participate closely, to send technical
members with the evaluation of various innovative technologies in the process
developmental feasibility and the technology in mass production of the prototype
deve
