Semiconductor wafer developed

Group4 Labs has announced a gallium nitride (GaN)-on-diamond semiconductor wafer.

The Xero Wafer sits less than 0.5 nanometers away from a synthetic diamond substrate and features high temperature resilience for high-power, high-frequency electronic, solid-state white lighting, military and photonics applications.

Initially available in 10x10mm square pieces, the Xero Wafer is the first in the new product family to be offered commercially.

This industry class of wafer is suitable for use in the conventional epitaxial growth of GaN and its aluminum and indium-based alloys.

Group4 Labs' technology enables the GaN layer to be atomically attached to a freestanding, proprietary polycrystalline chemical-vapor-deposited (CVD) diamond substrate (25-microns thick). The GaN exposed is an atomically smooth surface finish that is epi-ready for further epitaxial deposition. The wafer is shipped freestanding or optionally on a disposable, silicon wafer mount to permit 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 solution by extricating heat from the chip's core almost at the instant that it is generated. This is due to the sub-nanometer 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. A 3X improvement in the thermal conductivity of a transistor array could boost the array's power-density by ten fold.

Group4 Labs' scientists have claimed to, 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 new type of semiconductor allows manufacturers of power amplifiers (for cellular base stations), microwave and millimeter-wave circuits, UV laser diodes and ultra-bright blue/green/white LEDs, to achieve power density and efficiency levels never before attained."