TDI moves to expanded facility
The new facility encompasses 32 000 sq. ft. and includes expanded manufacturing and R&D space for crystal growth, epitaxial deposition, and material characterization.
The facility will be geared initially for the mass production of GaN and AlGaN epitaxial wafers. Follow-on product lines will include bulk GaN substrates, which were introduced to the compound semiconductor industry last summer.
The move is especially significant given the rapidly increasing demand for low defect substrate materials for GaN-based optoelectronic and electronic devices.
The volume availability of TDI s silicon-doped, GaN-on-sapphire templates reduces LED growth time, simplifies LED growth technology and increases LED production throughput without increased capital expenditure.
"The new facility is critical for us to serve our growing customer base, and provides the opportunity for TDI to enter volume production of low defect GaN, AlN, and AlGaN epitaxial wafers," stated Vladimir Dmitriev, President and CEO of TDI. "These wafers have been under development at TDI for almost five years and the move to the new facility is the next step toward their commercialization."
"By the end of this year we expect to reach a production capacity of thousands of GaN epi wafers per month," he added.
In addition to rapid commercialization of GaN epi wafers, the new space will allow TDI to speed up development of bulk GaN substrates. The proprietary technology involves bulk GaN crystal growth, crystal slicing, polishing, and final surface preparation.
As it becomes commercially available, low defect bulk GaN will be the material of choice for a number of key advanced semiconductor devices. Included are blue spectrum high brightness light emitting diodes (HB-LEDs, which include green, blue, violet, ultraviolet and white), blue and UV laser diodes (which will replace products such as current DVD lasers with significantly increased capacity), and advanced microwave electronic devices.
