Product category:
Electronics Manufacturing Materials and Consumables
News Release from: Group4 Labs | Subject: Xero Wafer
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 07 April 2006
GaN-on-diamond wafer adds an extra
option
Group4 Labs has released a gallium-facing gallium-nitride-on-diamond semiconductor water.
Group4 Labs has released a gallium-facing gallium-nitride-on-diamond semiconductor water The new 10mm2 Ga-facing wafer is the third product in the Xero Wafer family and shares the same proprietary technology that permits a single GaN layer to be atomically attached to a synthetic diamond substrate
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 15 Feb 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Novel wafer structure boosts heat dissipation
Available now from extreme materials developer Group4 Labs, is a revolutionary gallium nitride (GaN)-on-diamond semiconductor wafer.
GaN-on-diamond wafers handle the heat
Group4 Labs has developed the world's first 2in gallium-nitride-on-diamond semiconductor wafer.
All three products exhibit unprecedented high temperature resilience for very high-power, high-frequency electronic, solid-state white lighting, military and photonics applications.
Group4 Labs' semiconductor wafers are ideal for use in the conventional epitaxial growth of GaN and its aluminium and indium-based alloys.
The GaN-on-diamond, ground-breaking technology enables the GaN layer to be atomically attached to a freestanding, proprietary polycrystalline chemical-vapor-deposited (CVD) diamond substrate (25um thick).
The new wafer's GaN exterior is an atomically smooth finish with a gallium-facing surface that is epi-ready for further epitaxial deposition.
The wafer is shipped freestanding or optionally on a disposable, silicon wafer mount to allow easy handling during wafer processing.
The GaN-on-diamond wafer addresses the classic heat problem plaguing the high power and high-speed transistor industry: excessive heat build-up inside the chip's engine that ultimately leads to device failure.
The new wafer offers a unique solution by extricating heat from the chip's core almost at the instant that it is generated.
This is due to the subnanometre proximity of the chip's active region to diamond, a nearly perfect thermal conductor.
CVD diamond's thermal conductivity is about 3x to 30x more than that of conventional semiconductors.
Just a 3x improvement in the thermal conductivity of a transistor array's substrate could boost the array's power-density by 10x to 100x depending on device configuration.
Group4 Labs' scientists have for the first time, successfully attached a compound semiconductor such as GaN to the tough-to-handle diamond.
According to Group4 Labs' CEO, Felix Ejeckam: "This wafer features a gallium-facing surface rather than the nitrogen-facing surface which we introduced last month".
He continues: "Unlike the optional N-facing version, this new surface resembles the conventional crystallographic structure that many of our customers are accustomed to using".
The new 10 x 10mm GaN-on-diamond wafers are currently sold for $550-$600 per unit.
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