Innovative Technologies Supporting Affordable Increases in Power, Efficiency, and Bandwidth for Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) X-Band Radars

This Phase-II STTR proposal proposes the use of a new class of diamond-seeded solid-state material system for the manufacture of virtually all packaged intense heat-generating solid-state electronics in X-band and Ballistic Missile Defense radar components and systems. In this proposal wherein much preliminary (also MDA-funded) work has been demonstrated hitherto by the authors, Gallium Nitride-on-SiC power amplifiers in X-band radar are replaced with GaN-on-Diamond power amplifiers to enable nearly total and immediate heat extraction from the device¡¦s active region. This proposal is focused on producing up to 400ƒYm thick 2¡" GaN-on-Diamond FET wafers, as well as 5 W/mm GaN-on-Diamond FET devices. Polycrystalline free standing CVD diamond ¡V nature¡¦s most efficient thermal conductor ¡V enables nearly perfect heat extraction from a ¡hot¡" device, owing to the extreme thermal conductivity of diamond (GaAs, Si, and SiC are 35-, 150- and 390-W/m/K respectively; diamond is 1200-2000 W/m/K per quality). In the proposed scheme, the device¡¦s active epitaxial layers are removed from their original host substrate and transferred to a specially treated low-cost CVD diamond substrate using a proprietary low-cost manufacturable scheme. The semiconductor-on-diamond technology proposed here may be applied to GaAs, GaN, SiC etc. at up to 8¡" in wafer diameter.