SMI Develops GaN 600V/20A in Collaboration with SUNY Albany with DOE Funded Effort
Structured Materials Industries, Inc. is pleased to announce that it has been awarded by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer Research ("STTR") contract to develop pervasive Manufacturing Infrastructure of GaN (>20A/>600V) Qualified for Electric Device Vehicle Power Electronics. SMI is partnered with researchers at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute Albany (SUNY-Albany) for this project. SMI, and SUNY-Albany researchers will address the issues related to the production of uniform quality GaN materials on large area substrates (4 inches and beyond), design and develop power devices that will perform at high current (>20A) and higher voltages (>600V) (for electric drive vehicle on board electronics) and develop production pathways. SMI will focus on developing novel reactor concepts to increase the GaN material quality /uniformity across large wafer sizes, while SUNY will use reactor technology to optimize develop materials and device structures on 4” substrate and SMI will help enable commercialization both device and reactor technology. Our partner at the State University of New York (SUNY) Polytechnic Institute-Albany, Prof. Shahedipour-Sandvik is an expert in growth of III-N materials and device fabrication and was the first to report enhancement operation in AlGaN/GaN HEMT. The SUNY - Albany team has recently reported on a novel integrated body-diode AlGaN/GaN HEMT power device that enables dynamic tuning of Von, and substantially reduces Ioff current.
The Principal Investigator and SMI Research Scientist, Dr. Arul Arjunan commented, "We are designing a concept MOCVD system to improve the yield and quality of GaN devices for vehicle power electronics. The concept system will lead to grow films with both thickness and quality uniformity. In addition to this, we will aim to improve the quality of the film to achieve better devices than that are currently existing. The success of this program will increase the efficiency of the hybrid electric and electric vehicles”.
In Phase I the team will demonstrate GaN power devices at the 100 mm wafer scale, which can operate at >600V and > 10A, (with a Phase I reach goal of >20A and >600V). At the end of the Phase I program we will define the product scale up pathways for 100, 150 and 200mm wafer production and packaged device production and we will firm up customers for the developing processes and device technology.
"SMI’s team is very happy to be contributing to the advancement of nitride power technology.”, said Structured Materials Industries, Inc. President and CEO, Dr. Gary S. Tompa, further adding, “ improving power efficiency and lowering costs will help bring greater numbers of more environmentally friendly vehicles to market sooner"
In the past, SMI has worked on several different III-N funded research programs and have built tools for research and development of III-Nitrides.
