News Article
Kyma launches commercial 2inch n-type GaN substrates
The firm's gallium nitride substrates will allow for GaN-on-GaN growth. This will result in devices that have double the thermal conductivity and 100-1000 times fewer crystal defects than GaN grown on sapphire and silicon substrates
Kyma Technologies has announced the commercial availability of 2-inch diameter n-type c-plane GaN substrates.
Kyma has produced free-standing GaN products in a variety of form factors during the company’s 15 year history,. These include c-plane substrate form factors of 10mm squares, 18mm squares, and 30mm diameter rounds, and rectangular non-polar and semi-polar substrates of 5mm x 10mm and larger.
However, 2 inch c-plane GaN substrates were typically held back from commercial sales for use in government contract programs or internal R&D. Improvements in the availability of 2 inch substrates has allowed the company to release more of this product to commercial customers.
Kyma Chief Marketing Officer, Ed Preble, notes, “GaN device manufacturers making devices on sapphire or silicon are constantly striving to improve the performance of their devices. GaN substrates allow for GaN-on-GaN growth, which results in devices that have double the thermal conductivity and 100-1000 times fewer crystal defects. Improvements to these two material properties are critical for boosting device performance and reliability.”
2-inch round substrates are a critical form factor for most GaN based device processors. Most LED manufacturers currently use 2-inch sapphire wafers in MOCVD GaN epitaxy systems and also in a number of post-epitaxy wafer processing systems. Providing this wafer shape is therefore critical to enabling bulk GaN wafers to penetrate into the existing GaN device markets.
Kyma CEO, Keith Evans, comments, “We are very pleased to begin shipping 2-inch wafers, an important entry point for our customer’s production requirements. Kyma has long sought to improve the availability of GaN substrates for our many customers asking for this material every day and this is a critical step for us to take.”
In addition to the thermal conductivity and defect related benefits of GaN-on-GaN device growth, there are several other benefits, including a) shorter and simpler epitaxy recipes, b) higher current density and/or smaller device footprint, c) no wafer bow after epitaxy, and d) simpler designs for vertical device geometries.
