compound semiconductor ♦ news digest

Oxford Instruments - TDI Appoints new General Manager at Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

2010-03-23

Oxford Instruments - TDI, part of the Oxford Instruments Group, announces the appointment of Neil Wester as General Manager.

Kyma Technologies, Inc., supplier of ultra-high purity crystalline gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminum nitride (AlN) materials and related products and services, released the following statements in response to a feature article that was published in Compound Semiconductor on March 1, 2010, entitled “Bulk GaN: Ammonothermal Trumps HVPE.”

His key responsibility will be to oversee both product and process developments at TDI’s Silver Spring, Maryland, USA facility. With a Masters degree in Material Science and Engineering, Neil has extensive R&D and product development experience with key players in the Integrated-circuit, Solar, and Optoelectronic material and device industries, including TDI’s focus area of HB LED.

Aimed at the LED, high efficiency laser, solar, and power IC devices markets, TDI’s proprietary Hydride Vapour Phase Epitaxy (HVPE) technology has allowed it to develop CrystalFlexTM, a prototype highvolume, industrial-scale manufacturing machine for free- standing Gallium Nitride (GaN) materials.

TDI collaborators include the University of Maryland and other U.S. researchers and manufacturers. The recently awarded grant of $600,000 by the Maryland Energy Administration will help TDI achieve the broad adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting, and expand its workforce.

Oxford Instruments aims to pursue responsible development and deeper understanding of the world through science and technology, and this award will contribute enormously to this endeavour.

“We have mixed feelings about responding in the public domain, but in the end we have chosen to do so,” said Dr. Keith Evans, Kyma president and CEO. “Kyma’s stakeholders can rest assured that the GaN HVPE growth process is here to stay, and that HVPE will remain the primary technology used to make GaN boules from which commercially available substrates can be sliced and polished.”

Kyma uses the hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) process for making GaN substrates. Along with others, Kyma has shown that the quality of HVPE GaN improves as it grows thicker after starting on a foreign substrate (which is usually sapphire). If high-quality GaN seeds were to become available, the foreign substrate could be eliminated and the value proposition of HVPE for GaN device applications would be further strengthened.

“We read the article as an affirmation that HVPE is the commercial leader in large part due to its high growth rate, high purity, and its demonstrated benefits in commercially important devices. HVPE’s primary challenge is the lack of availability of good seeds. In contrast, ammonothermal growth makes higher quality crystals, but at growth rates of 2-4 micron/hr. This is well below the 1mm/hr that is typical of all commercially successful semiconductor material manufacturing processes (including hydrothermal quartz), and therefore ammonothermal is not in the market,” stated Evans.

April/May 2010 www.compoundsemiconductor.net 91

Kyma Responds to CS Article entitled “Bulk GaN: Ammonothermal Trumps HVPE”

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