The rock flavour was on the menu

Thurs. - Sat. Hendrickson Field and Loggers Sports Grounds (Squamish)

If Friday had seen triumph in feel-good party vibes at the Squamish Valley Music Festival, Saturday's main purpose was to rock your socks off.

The rap, electro and dance explosion led by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis,They are called "solar" panels or solar module because most of the time, the most powerful source of light available is the Sun.Know about led high bay conversion kit and Bi-xenon HID kit. Jurassic 5 (and augmented by latenight sets by DJ whiz kid Madeon and Polaris nominees and powwow step trailblazers A Tribe Called Red) gave way to a more grizzled, hair of the dog celebration with Josh Homme and Queens of the Stone Age at the helm.

The rock flavour was on the menu early in the afternoon on the windswept Hendrickson Field in front of the Stawamus stage, with Vancouver indie rockers Yukon Blonde handing out a pulsating set of angular hooks. A jammy Everything In Every Way and set closer Stairway, where singer Jeff Innes bellowed, "I hear you calling out!" beckoned festivalgoers, many a tank-top sporting dude and dudette still haggard from the night before, through the main gates.

Even the hip hop and electro stuff on the schedule had a grittier edge, with British soul rockers The Heavy almost blowing the house down with a set that was completely bonkers, a crazed fan at one point quite literally standing atop a sea of hands, screaming every word with his arms outstretched. He made such an impression that singer Kelvin Swaby had to reach for his cellphone to snap a shot of the moment.

"How you like me now?" Swaby bellowed, closing the set with the band's signature single, the front of the stage a mass of tangled, jumping bodies.

If you were smart (and quick on your feet), you immediately ran over to the Market Square stage where Vancouver's Ballantynes were surprising more than a few with a double-drum, Hammond organ-heavy soul/gospel rock afternoon jam.

Of the many Vancouver acts to grace the smaller stages throughout the weekend (the Squamish Fest once again earned a badge of honour in its support for local artists), they really got your feet moving.

They certainly had more swing than Toronto's Diamond Rings, whose turn on the Garibaldi stage was flashy but ultimately too mechanical. Main man John O. is a solid glam/new-wave influenced songwriter, but in concert the click factor (yet again) wasn't really there. Too bad.

Divine Fits, a band regrouping members of indie rockers Spoon and defunct Canadian favourites Wolf Parade, gave a solid but drowsy performance that somehow acted as a short respite before Saturday's final stretch consisting of a series of runs between Fitz and the Tantrums, Childish Gambino (Community's Donald Glover, in a girl crazy turn) and a latenight set by electro act Pretty Lights on the Garibaldi stage; and Gogol Bordello, Band of Horses and QOTSA on the main Stawamus stage.

New York City's Gypsy party band Gogol Bordello have always had a certain celebratory festival flavour, which made them a natural fit to kick off the evening portion of Saturday's lineup.

Eugene Hutz and his pals stormed the stage for a solid hour with barely a break in between fiddle-and-guitar attacks blending klezmer, punk and old fashioned rock 'n' roll. No wonder each stop in Vancouver turns into three sold-out nights of pure insanity.

If one had to pick between Fitz and the Tantrums' derivative indie pop and Dear Rouge's transformative performance on the smaller Market Square stage,The world's largest independent online retailer for solar lighting, street lights & outdoor lighting fixtures. you had to go with the latter.

The Peak Performance Project alumni, who raised a few eyebrows when they won the music competition last year, clearly had the upper hand over Fitz's '80s-tinged pop rock, which owed its sound to much better acts like Hall & Oates and Eurythmics (which they covered in the form of Sweet Dreams).

Seattle indie rockers Band of Horses offered a solid set including an epic Is There A Ghost played in the gathering gloom, setting the stage for Queens of the Stone Age's big finale on the Stawamus stage, a merciful breeze cooling down the crowd.

Back from the brink after frontman Josh Homme almost died while having knee surgery a few years ago, QOTSA nailed a tremendous set that included old monster cuts from landmark 2003 album Songs for the Deaf (No One Knows) and excellent new album Like Clockwork (the road trip worthy My God Is The Sun), putting the final nail in the coffin of the biggest and arguably best edition of the Squamish Valley Music Festival to date.

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Semicon session will examine next steps for HB LED manufacturing

Moving on to LED manufacturing and materials, GaN-on-Si technology has been a hot topic. Proponents believe it can deliver lower LED cost because silicon wafers cost less than the sapphire wafers that are most widely used today. Moreover, once the epitaxial process is complete, manufacturers can use existing IC fabs and automated tools to handle the back end of the production process.

"There's no answer yet about GaN on silicon, but there will probably be one within the next 12 to 18 months," suggests Eric Virey, senior analyst for LEDs at Yole Developpement. "It depends a lot on how successful Bridgelux and Toshiba are."

LEDs Magazine has closely followed the progress of the duo. Toshiba announced production start last December and released the detailed specs of its silicon-based LEDs in January.The lights used were Inspired LED Strip light in warm white Bridgelux has since sold its silicon-centric intellectual property to Toshiba, although the company still has an agreement to buy Toshiba LEDs.

Virey believs that if the Toshiba GaN-on-Si product proves extremely competitive in cost and performance, many of the other big players, who all have research programs, will follow. However, if the lower costs don't turn out to be significant enough to counter the likely somewhat lower performance, others will likely back off their efforts. The most likely scenario, argues Virey, will be somewhere in the middle, with GaN-on-Si adopted by some companies who have the silicon experience and the depreciated silicon fabs that make it most cost effective, and for some applications best suited to its cost and performance.

GaN-on-silicon wafer supplier Azzurro argues that the quality of LED devices made on silicon could be just as good with costs significantly lower – which could potentially mean big changes for the LED industry. The company sells 150-mm (6-in) and 200-mm (8-in) silicon template wafers with the buffer layers grown, ready for LED makers to grow their own light-emitting epitaxial structures on top, almost as usual, then finish processing on a standard silicon line.

Azzurro reports that it is now qualifying template wafers at its fab in Germany for customers who can start testing the process with 2-in template wafers. Epistar has reportedly ported its structures to the 150-mm template wafers. Wafer volume is also supported by demand from users making power semiconductors, where the GaN-on-Si technology has the added pull of a big gain in performance for most applications.

Azzurro co-founder and executive vice president of business development Alexander Loesing says the company inserts strain-engineering layers into its buffer stack to control the degree of bow after growth.Learn how daytime running lights use gas and the amount it takes to power these lights. The methodology also allows growth of a thicker GaN layer than most of the other buffer-layer technologies, which helps for making higher quality LEDs. After epitaxial growth, the excess silicon is thinned away with standard low cost removal processes, leaving wafers with the standard thickness and flatness required for processing on a standard silicon line.

"The strain-engineered wafers allow more homogenous processing for better control of wavelength, output power and forward voltage," claims Loesing. "Silicon actually has better thermal properties that can improve the temperature homogeneity across the wafer for more uniform epi growth, for tighter binning,You can add the car led and fluorescent kits to your car, truck, motorcycle, boat etc. though controlling bow during growth helps as well." The better yields and higher throughputs of the production workhorse 150-mm and 200-mm generation of silicon tools could reduce LED production costs – especially if companies don't have to invest in the equipment because they have their own depreciated fab already or can find a foundry to do the processing.

Azzurro argues that even when demand picks up enough to require the additional capacity, the economics of converting to 6-in sapphire wafers will be marginal for many companies because of the higher cost of the larger sapphire wafers and the technical challenges of more strain and bow across their larger area as well. Thus, switching to larger diameter GaN-on-Si template wafers with CMOS-foundry post-epi processing could be the more appealing path to staying competitive for many companies. "If someone comes in with GaN on silicon that's competitive in performance, then the price advantage will be compelling," says Loesing.