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GaAs device revenue reaches new heights
Although 2011 revenues hit a record $5.2 billion, growth is expected to slow down in the future
According to Strategy Analytics, a fast start to 2011 allowed the GaAs device market to withstand a slowdown toward the end of the year and post record revenue for 2011.
Continuing growth in demand for handset power amplifiers offset ongoing uncertainty in the global economy to propel the market to growth from last year’s value. The market research firm’s most recent report, “GaAs Industry Forecast: 2011-2016”, reports the overall GaAs device market grew by roughly 6 percent to close 2011 with slightly more than $5.2 billion of revenue.
The report also forecasts that slowing smartphone growth and an uncertain global economy will limit future growth rates below historical averages and the market will reach slightly more than $6.1 billion in 2016.
“The GaAs market began the year with strong growth”, notes Eric Higham, Director of the Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductor Technologies Service (GaAs). “Toward the end of the year, slowing growth in the smartphone segment and uncertainty in the global economy became the overriding trends and the overall GaAs device market slowed substantially. The underlying trends in the GaAs market still support growth, but uncertainty in the economy is likely to limit this growth.”
Asif Anwar, Director in the Strategy Analytics Strategic Technologies Practice adds, “We remain convinced that data consumption and GaAs content in handsets will increase, but fluctuations in the global economy will put a damper on network and consumer spending.”
Ammonia speeds MBE growth of GaN-on-silicon HEMTs
Gallium nitride transistors with good structural and electrical characteristics have been produced by ammonia MBE on a 100 mm silicon substrate
Researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, claim that they have produced the first crack-free, GaN-based HEMTs on 100 mm silicon substrates by ammonia MBE.
The substrate that they have used, silicon, is an excellent choice for producing GaN HEMTs, because it is cheap, available in large diameter formats and can produce transistors that can be processed through depreciated silicon lines.
By far the most common method for depositing the epilayers of the HEMT on silicon is MOCVD. However, according to the researchers from Singapore, this has several weaknesses compared with MBE.
In their opinion, MBE is a more flexible growth technique that delivers sharper interfaces and enables growth at lower temperatures, which aids the management of thermal mismatch between substrate and epilayers. What’s more, they claim that MBE allows in-situ monitoring of the growth surface, leading to real time growth process control at the monolayer scale.
The Singapore team favours ammonia MBE over its plasma-assisted (PA) variant, because it is difficult to control the III-V ratio with the latter technique. In addition, due to the low nitrogen molecular cracking efficiency – typically 1 percent to 10 percent – growth rates are typically below 0.4 µm/hr for PA MBE.
Using ammonia MBE, the team from Singapore have produced crack-free epilayers at growth rates of up to 0.75 µm/hr, nearly double that typically used in PA MBE. Faster growth doesn’t just save time – it also improves morphology, by accelerating the transition from three-dimensional to two-dimensional growth and suppressing defect formation.
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www.compoundsemiconductor.net October 2012
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