Advanced Manufacturing Process for Growth of Gallium Nitride Crystals

Gallium nitride crystal growth has gained more attention as the need for a homoepitaxial substrate for GaN devices has increased. Kyma Technologies proposes to develop an advanced manufacturing process capable of growing single crystal GaN at growth ratesin excess of 1mm/hr. 50mm single crystal GaN substrates produced by Kyma Technologies will be used as the seed material to ensure thermal and lattice matching. Using this innovative crystal growth technique, production of GaN boules greater than 1cm inthickness will be made possible. Previous attempts to grow boules of GaN has had limited success due to the thermodynamic properties of the Ga-N system. Boule growth of GaN has the possibility to reduce the dislocation density in GaN wafers to below 10^4per cm^2 in GaN substrates. GaN boule growth will also make it possible to produce wafers at low costs. The development of a low defect density GaN substrate will result in improved properties of epitaxial GaN films, and subsequently will improve theperformance of GaN-based devices. The limiting factors in many high performance applications based on GaN and related materials can be attributed directly to material defects in epitaxially grown layers. A high rate crystal growth technique for GaN willincrease commercialization and manufacturability of GaN substrates. Single crystal gallium nitride will be the future building block for many commercial devices. Low defect density gallium nitride films will benefit many microelectronic andoptoelectronic devices. This material will lead to the commercialization of blue lasers in data storage and solid state white LED lighting. Homoepitaxial growth of gallium nitride on single crystal gallium nitride substrates will result in improveddevice performance such as increased lifetime and brightness in optoelectronics and increase power and frequency in microelectronic devices.