Biography

Dr. David Lacey is the Director of Advanced Development & Services, R&D for Osram Opto Semiconductors (M) Sdn Bhd, Penang – part of the ams OSRAM group. He has worked for Osram Opto Semiconductors for more than two decades, with his career in the company bringing him from Germany to the USA and currently, Malaysia.

 

Joining the company at the turn of the century, Dr. Lacey started his journey in organic light, initialising a new research and development facility in San Jose. Subsequently, he moved to Penang to further define process and equipment specifications to achieve higher volumes of OLED manufacturing in Asia. Promoted to general manager, he transformed his unit into a fully self-sufficient department, achieving a crucial milestone for the Malaysia plant in product development and R&D. Dr. Lacey then undertook the responsibility of worldwide profit and loss for OLED displays along with overseeing its marketing, sales support, production and development. Then, leading the charge in the early days of LED R&D in Asia, in 2007, he led the team that developed and launched Osram’s ‘Golden Dr.agon’ High Reliability LEDs for Street & Industrial Solid State Lighting applications. As the current regional research and innovation director at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors (Malaysia), Dr. Lacey supports the development of both organic and inorganic lighting solutions along with their process research and development. Dr. Lacey’s strong attachment to R&D is hardly surprising given his background.

 

Born in the United Kingdom, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Materials Science from University of Sussex in 1988 and Doctor of Philosophy degree from the same university in 1993, researching ultra violet microscopy. After postgraduate work at Milliken Research Corporation, USA, and Ciba-Geigy SA, Switzerland, Dr. Lacey dived into the relatively new frontier of OLED, joining Cambridge Display Technology Limited (CDT), a start-up company spun out of the University of Cambridge in 1995. As a pioneer team member and later, technical manager, he contributed to the impressive growth of the company from a staff of six to 120 and a 100M$ IPO within five short years.  Moreover, his drive for utilising and expanding R&D to its maximum potential continues to this day.

 

Having served as a member of the National Science & Research Council of Malaysia, Dr. Lacey is currently a director of the country’s Collaborative Research in Engineering, Science & Technology (CREST) board. CREST spearheads collaborations and dialogues between industrialists and the Malaysian government with the aim of becoming a vital catalyst in creating a state-of-the-art local manufacturing ecosystem through an industry-academia-government partnership. Playing a crucial role of expediting R&D collaborations between academia and the industry, Dr. Lacey was appointed oversight committee chairman of the national “GaN on GaN” project involving four universities, government agencies and industry players, successfully positioning Malaysia at the forefront of developing highly efficient white LEDs, ultraviolet LEDs as well as other emerging applications.

 

His contributions in expanding LED opportunities in Asia and Malaysia in particular were ultimately recognised when Dr. Lacey received an honorary Doctor of Science award at the Arau Palace from a member of the country’s royalty in 2021. He currently holds over 10 patents and 20 publications in the fields of energy efficient LEDs based on inorganic and organic materials.

Outstanding Contribution Brief

1. New creations and breakthroughs

 

With a strong background in academics and research, Dr. David Lacey has two-and-a-half decades of experience in the semiconductor industry, specifically in producing and enhancing organic and inorganic lighting solutions. With 24 publications and about a dozen patents under his belt, Dr. Lacey’s foray into innovation stretches across multiple fields; from creating new devices to enhancing the durability and robustness of safety encapsulations to coming up with new methods of increasing production volume in efficient ways.

 

In the area of new device creation, Dr. Lacey holds patents in creating electroluminescent devices, organic light-emitting components comprising an electroluminescent layer and an optoelectronic component including a flexible carrier strip and an optoelectronic semiconductor chip. A large area of his focus over the years has also been centred on the bettering of the protective encapsulation for electronic components, making them less susceptible to damage from moisture and external influences. His patents in this area include the invention of a lead frame for a radiation-emitting component containing a protective layer for the reflective coating and enhancing protective encapsulation for electronic components, particularly electro-optical or optoelectronic components such as an organic light emitting diode (OLED), and producing such products efficiently by reshaping the encapsulation element using heat. They also cover the creation of an electroluminescent device having a protection layer in the cap bonding region that protects the layers below from damage during removal of polymer materials.

 

Aside from that, Dr. Lacey has created different methods of superimposing a plane encapsulation element and a drying agent on top of each other as well as a method of encapsulating an OLED by producing the organic optoelectronic component on a substrate wherein the organic optoelectronic component has an active region and regions with contact pads or scribe / rupture regions. He has also contributed in the improving of encapsulation for electroluminescent devices in relation to homogeneous or uniform deposition of active organic materials.

 

2. Bridging the gap

 

Albert Einstein once said, “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” Wholeheartedly subscribing to this philosophy, Dr. David Lacey has spent over a decade bridging the gap between academia and industry in Asia.

 

Moving to the small but industrially robust island of Penang, Malaysia, in 2002, the United Kingdom native began steering OSRAM Opto Semiconductors (Malaysia) into breaking ground in the field of organic and inorganic lighting solutions. From elevating and expanding process and equipment specifications to boost OLED production to leading the charge in LED research and development in Asia, Dr. Lacey's over 20-year commitment to the company is both impressive and noteworthy.

 

But beyond his role in the company as Director of Advanced Development & Services, R&D, Dr. Lacey has been hard at work in helping to realign Malaysia’s higher education science curriculum. Long accused of consisting of programmes that were overly academic and insufficiently industry-relevant, science graduates in the country have faced increasing challenges in thriving in the high-paced world of electrical, electronic, software and semiconductor industries. Re-education in line with industry needs takes up precious time of which fresh hires have little of. To remain competitive both regionally and globally, Dr. Lacey knew exactly where to start - the universities. Aiming to build a strong ecosystem of technology and talent, Dr. Lacey began working to expand collaborations between local institutes of higher learning with not only industry players but also with international academic research hubs. Using ams OSRAM as a starting point, new relationships were forged with the Science University of Malaysia (USM) and its Institute of Nano Optoelectronics Research (INOR). Creating lines of communication and cooperation between the industry and academia, he believed, would not only open up new possibilities and ideas for the industry but crucially give insight to the country’s future engineers and technical managers on the needs of the industries they would ultimately join. Dr. Lacey’s efforts were soon noticed and he was asked to join the National Science & Research Council of Malaysia (MOSTI) to provide input to the Malaysian government on science-related policies.

 

Following that, Dr. Lacey was made a member of the board of directors of CREST – the Collaborative Research in Engineering, Science and Technology Centre, launched in 2012 to address Malaysia’s needs in electrical and electronics (E&E) research, development and commercialisation. 

 

3. GaN-on-GaN

 

When CREST was formed, the organisation identified the LED industry as a key area of development that could be expanded through collaborative R&D programmes. Their goal was to break into the global market for GaN research and position Malaysia as one of the top three LED solutions providers in the world. In 2016, Dr. Lacey was appointed as the Chairman of the Oversight Committee for Malaysia’s “GaN on GaN” national project, which involved the participation of academia (Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UNIMAP) and Monash University Sunway Campus (MUSC)), government agencies (CREST and Northern Corridor Implementation Authority (NCIA)) as well as industry players (OSRAM Opto Semiconductors (Malaysia), Penchem, Inari and ITRAMAS). The aim of the project was establishing epitaxy capabilities for the Solid State Lighting (SSL) and LED industry in the country. Though GaN-on-GaN, participating universities engaged in international collaborative research involving high-quality patents and publications that demonstrated world-class achievements. One such instance was a technology transfer from the University of California, Santa Barbara, to Malaysia, which assisted in the production of the first-ever Malaysia-made high-brightness LED for white lighting application based on GaN on sapphire as well as GaN on GaN technologies. 

 

Overall, the GaN on GaN research programme has trained over a dozen scientitsts and engineers on metalorganic chemical vapour deposition(MOCVD) and advanced LED fabrication techniques from 2017 to 2020 and produced 70 GaN search experts and engineers. Recent efficiencies of white LEDs approaching 200 lm/watt achieved in the program also reached commercially viable levels, a boon in translating research into business-viable solutions. This, ultimately, is an important stepping stone in positioning Malaysia at the forefront of developing highly-efficient SSL LEDs, ultraviolet LEDs as well as other emerging applications, such as power devices. Dr. Lacey’s continuous innovation in the technology of LEDs as well as building up the ecosystem of LEDs in Malaysia has assisted the country on its route to become a high-income nation and achieving a more sustainable future.  His guidance of research activities in academia with respect to LED technology has been pivotal in assisting students, researchers, scientists, and academicians to achieve a breakthrough for the advancement of science and technology in Malaysia.

 

For these reasons, in late 2021, Dr. Lacey was chosen as just one of four recipients that were conferred honorary doctorates from the Science University of Malaysia. Accepting the award at the Royal Palace of Arau in the state of Perlis, Dr. Lacey received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from a member of the country’s royalty. Dr. Lacey also remains integrally involved in the local industrial scene, currently sitting as the president of the the Free Industrial Zone, Penang, Companies' Association (Frepenca).