News Article
Kyma's AlN template production ramps up
The firm says over the past two weeks many customers in multiple nations have said that Kyma has by far the best aluminium nitride templates on the market
Kyma Technologies has provided an update on its AlN template manufacturing capability.
The company is a domestic supplier of crystalline GaN and AlN template materials, as well as bulk GaN substrates.
Most of these products are fabricated beginning using Kyma’s patent protected plasma vapour deposition of nanocolumns (PVDNC) crystal growth process which is implemented on Kyma’s patented and proprietary PVDNC crystal growth tools.
The AlN templates are produced both for commercial sale and for use internally for fabricating GaN templates, bulk GaN substrates, and related products.
Until 2011 Kyma’s PVDNC effort relied on early-generation PVDNC crystal growth tools which were especially useful for the company’s R&D stage but were not designed for high volumes. To keep up with growing demand for Kyma’s AlN and GaN products and the growing interest in larger diameter products, in 2011 Kyma designed and built their first PVDNC production tool which featured a larger diameter platter and much faster growth cycle time.
Related company announcements made in 2011 and 2012 include those of 1) the expansion of AlN template manufacturing capacity, 2) the demonstration of a 12” AlN on silicon template, and 3) the demonstration of a 10” AlN on sapphire template.
Primary applications for Kyma’s AlN templates are for visible LEDs and power switching electronics. Recently demand has also grown for ultra-violet (UV) LED applications. Customers are interested in both AlN on sapphire and AlN on silicon for the LED applications; power electronics customers are focused mostly on AlN on silicon.
Ed Preble, Kyma’s Chief Marketing Officer, and Tamara Stephenson, Kyma’s Technical Sales Engineer, just completed a sales and marketing trip in the Asian Pacific focusing on application of Kyma’s materials for LED applications.
Preble notes, “Over the past two weeks we were told by multiple customers in multiple nations that we have by far the best AlN templates on the market. Such customer input validates our PVDNC process as the technology of choice for creating a high quality nucleation surface for our customers’ device wafer epitaxy processes.”
