In December 2005, Tokushima Prefecture established the “LED Valley Concept” aiming for the concentration of light (LED) related industries, taking advantage of its location of an LED manufacturer that created the “blue LED” that led to the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics and boasts the world’s top share of the “white LED”, which is indispensable in the modern society and industrial fields.
However, with the rapid growth of the LED-related industry, the generalization of LEDs and their applied products in the visible light range has progressed and new companies have entered the business, which has intensified cost competition among large and small companies in Japan and abroad. As a result, LED-related companies in the Tokushima are required to stabilize their business by securing sales channels, break away from subcontracting, and develop management strategies for further growth and rapid progress.
Against this backdrop, “next-generation LEDs, “* which are attracting attention from the perspective of adding higher value to LEDs, have the potential to form a large market both in Japan and overseas in the future. Against this backdrop, Tokushima Prefecture, as a new regional development initiative utilizing the potential of next-generation light, was selected in October 2018 for the government’s “Local University and Regional Industry Creation Grant Project” with the aim of promoting universities in the region and encouraging young people to study and work, thereby enhancing regional vitality and sustainable development. With this project at its core, we are formulating a new “Next Generation LED Valley Initiative” in July 2019, aiming to create a virtuous cycle of “promotion of light-related industries” and “human resources specialized in light application” by utilizing the potential of next-generation light for further growth and advancement of LED-related industries and other industries in our prefecture.
* In this plan, we define “next-generation LEDs” as light in the invisible wavelength range, such as “deep ultraviolet light,” “infrared light,” and “terahertz light,” which have different characteristics from general-purpose LEDs.
In Tokushima Prefecture, LED-related research and human resource development have been actively carried out in public research institutions and higher education institutions.