UW-Madison opens ultra wide bandgap lab
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has opened an Ultra-Wide Bandgap Semiconductor MOCVD Laboratory, a facility that will focus on the emerging class of ultra wide bandgap III-nitride semiconductors such as AlGaN and AlN.
At the moment, fabricating and characterising ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors is challenging because they require expensive equipment and deep expertise in MOCVD or other advanced commercialisation- friendly deposition techniques.
Shubhra Pasayat (pictured above centre), who oversees the new facility as the lab’s principal investigator, set up a commercial Aixtron MOCVD reactor for research when she first joined UW-Madison in 2021. The new facility takes this to the next level with an Agnitron Agilis 100 system that can handle higher temperatures and lower pressures. This will allow Pasayat and her students to design and precisely synthesise high-quality two-inch diameter wafers of high-aluminium content ultra-wide bandgap materials.
The lab is described as being at the centre of UW-Madison’s rising III-nitride ecosystem. The onsite faculty’s broad expertise in chip design and architecture, materials characterisation, fabrication, advanced packaging, and systems integration means these ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors can go from the drawing board to the motherboard all on one campus—streamlining and improving the research process.
