+44 (0)24 7671 8970
More publications     •     Advertise with us     •     Contact us
 
News Article

IQE and US researchers make GaN power progress

New report shows GaN p-n diodes with near ideal performance

Semiconductor wafer company IQE has collaborated with two leading US research groups to create GaN power diodes capable of serving as the building blocks for future GaN power switches.

IQE engineers worked with researchers from Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame to create the GaN power devices that will pave the way to enabling a wide range of applications from electronic products to electricity distribution infrastructure.

GaN has many desirable features but is notorious for its inherent, high-defect levels and their associated impact on reliability. To overcome these issues the teams concentrated on developing GaN based devices with record low-defect concentrations to probe GaN's ultimate performance limits for power electronics. They describe their results in a paper in Applied Physics Letters published in December 2015.

The work is the first report of GaN p-n diodes with near ideal performance in all aspects simultaneously: a unity ideality factor, avalanche breakdown voltage, and about a two-fold improvement in device figure-of merits over previous records.

Project researcher Zongyang Hu from Cornell University said: "Our results are an important step toward understanding the intrinsic properties and the true potential of GaN, and these achievements are only possible in high-quality GaN device structures [an effort led by IQE engineers] prepared on high-quality GaN bulk substrates and with precisely tuned fabrication technologies [an effort led by Kazuki Nomoto, a research associate at Cornell University]."

Group leader Grace Huili Xing, of the research group at Cornell's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering said: "Leading one of these projects, we at Cornell, in collaboration with our industrial partners IQE, Qorvo, and UTRC, have established an integrated plan to develop three terminal GaN power transistors, package them, and insert them into circuits and products."

The team's work is part of the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) 'SWITCHES' program.

×
Search the news archive

To close this popup you can press escape or click the close icon.
×
Logo
×
Register - Step 1

You may choose to subscribe to the Compound Semiconductor Magazine, the Compound Semiconductor Newsletter, or both. You may also request additional information if required, before submitting your application.


Please subscribe me to:

 

You chose the industry type of "Other"

Please enter the industry that you work in:
Please enter the industry that you work in: