Putting India on the global GaN stage

University spin-out Agnit has just secured funding to grow its GaN portfolio, a combination of epiwafers and power and RF devices.

BY RICHARD STEVENSON, EDITOR, CS MAGAZINE

For GaN electronics, which serves both the power and RF sectors, evidence of its rapid rise is seen in its double-digit rises in revenue, which will swell this market to several billion dollars by the end of this decade.

But that’s not the only way to track success. The growth of GaN is also seen in the geographical expansion of its chipmakers. As well as big the names in the US, Europe, Japan and China – such as Navitas, EPC, Transphorm, Infineon, Toshiba and Innoscience – smaller players are cropping up all over the world, including in unfamiliar locations, such as India.

Breaking new ground on this sub-continent is Agnit, a spin-out of the Indian Institute of Science that has just raised another US $3.5 million to advance its GaN portfolio, a mix of epiwafers and power and RF devices.

Company co-founder and CEO, Hareesh Chandrasekar cannot lay claim to Agnit being the sole trailblazer for compound semiconductor manufacturing in India, because it’s just possible that there is another maker of such devices hiding from view. But he is adamant that Agnit is the first to use indigenous technology, rather than getting it from somewhere else.

Introducing semiconductor manufacturing in India could be crucial to the growth of this nation’s economy, according to Chandrasekar. “If India is going to be a 5, 7, $10 trillion economy in the next decade or so, there's no way this is happening without us having a presence in the electronics manufacturing ecosystem.”

While there are a number of options for gaining a foothold in the semiconductor industry, some are more attractive than others, with cutting-edge CMOS having a formidable financial barrier to entry.

“We felt that gallium nitride was a nice sweet spot,” says Chandrasekar, who argues that while this technology is not as complex as state-of-the-art CMOS, and doesn't demand fabs with price tags of several billion dollars, it’s up and coming, and there is a local pull for products.

Agnit produces GaN power and RF devices at the incubator at the Indian Institute of Science.

An academic heritage
Founded in late 2019, but initially impeded by the global pandemic that stalled the start of this company’s operations until January 2021, Agnit receives tremendous support from the Indian Institute of Science, in terms of both facilities and expertise.

This institute is a great incubator for Agnit, having constructed a pilot production line for GaN that has a peak capacity of about ten 6-inch wafers per day. Supporting this is a very good characterisation suite.

Another asset of this institute is its extensive development of GaN technology, creating a strong IP base that draws on more than a decade and a half of research.

Imparting expertise from the Institute to Agnit is seamless, as four of the seven founders, all still involved, are academics with complementary capabilities related to the fabrication, operation and reliability of GaN devices. The other three co-founders, now the core management team, have PhDs in the field of GaN, but bring a different skillset, partly thanks to time spent working in the semiconductor industry. Strengthening this team are a growing number of employees, now totalling 16.

In terms of the commercialisation of its GaN device portfolio, Agnit has initially focused on the RF, before more recently expanding into the power domain.

Agnit’s RF devices are marketed to both the telecom and the strategic sector. Products from rival suppliers are already being deployed in base stations, encouraging the Bangalore start-up to pursue more niche applications associated with 5G networks. “It could be things like private networks,” says Chandrasekar.

For the power market, which Chandrasekar describes as “pretty hot now”, there are many players with unique business models. To carve out a space in this sector, he and his colleagues are trying to address a particular set of problems associated with the unique, local market. Prototyping is underway.

To support its device development, Agnit is packaging its die in-house. But this will change when it moves into production, with this final manufacturing step outsourced, using the strong local ecosystem.

"We are also exploring global partnerships to see how we can actually leverage the global packaging capacity for the GaN chips that we make,” says Chandrasekar.

The third string to Agnit’s bow is its supply of GaN epiwafers to chipmakers.

“We had already supplied to academia,” says Chandrasekar, adding that the new additional capacity is enabling Agnit to expand its horizons and build foundry relationships for the global supply of GaN-based power and RF epiwafers.

One of the issues hampering the GaN industry for many years is that “epi is a black box,” according to Chandrasekar. “When you buy a batch of wafers, you never know if they're the right ones to begin with for your process or not. That has always been a big stumbling block.”

Agnit is addressing this concern by offering the capability to adjust the epitaxial process based on internal device feedback. This helps customers to target particular performance specifications.

As well as epitaxial growth facilities and device processing capabilities, the Indian Institute of Science has an well-equipped characterisation suite.

Patents and IP
Agnit has a strong IP portfolio, supported by technology developed from the Indian Institute of Science, which it licences exclusively. The start-up has more than 20 patents, of which 15 or so are global patents.

Like the leaders of many foundries, those calling the shots at Agnit have thought very carefully about what IP requires patenting, and what is best left undisclosed. Such decisions are guided by whether patents have the potential to expose and demonstrate infringement. “If you can't do that, then it makes very little sense to patent your IP,” argues Chandrasekar.

Highlighting the need for defendable IP are the patent battles being fought between Innoscience and EPC and Infineon. While such skirmishes may alarm some chipmakers within the GaN industry, they are not a major concern to those leading Agnit. “Everything that we commercialise has our own patents as a backing, or our trade secrets and know-how as a backing,” says Chandrasekar. “We are quite careful about that.”

Investing in its future
The US$3.5 million raised this Autumn came from a seed round led by 3one4 Capital and Zephyr Peacock.

This investment will help to increase production yields for 4-inch GaN-on-SiC epiwafers for RF devices, and for 6-inch GaN-on-silicon wafers for the power sector.

In addition, the funding will be used improve device reliability, an issue that Agnit takes very seriously. “This will help our devices be qualified for various reliability standards that we are targeting based on the markets that we choose to go after,” remarks Chandrasekar.

As well as advancing yield and reliability, the seed funding will support prototype development – in particular, power devices for the domestic market, as well as RF devices for the telecom sector.

Two big goals for the next 12 months are to get RF products in the market, in both the telecom and strategic sectors, and to grow the epiwafer supply business, supporting these customers with device data.

“In 24 months, we'll also have the first alpha samples available on the power devices that we're working on, which will be sampled to customers for integration into their systems,” adds Chandrasekar.

The CEO expects the majority sales over the next few years to go to domestic markets, but 30 percent will ship overseas. If such success follows, that will surely help to grow the role of India on the global GaN stage.