News

14 April 2009

 

Inlustra starts commercial production of nonpolar GaN

Inlustra Technologies Inc says that it has now developed a scalable production process for manufacturing nonpolar and semipolar gallium nitride (GaN) substrates. 

Since GaN has a crystal structure that causes some of its properties to vary strongly with orientation, the nonpolar and semipolar planes of its structure provide alternatives to the conventional polar c-plane of GaN (which faces some fundamental device efficiency limitations), promising much increased device performance, manufacturing yields, and device longevity. However, producing GaN substrates has proven challenging, especially in the nonpolar and semipolar orientations. 

With the aim of providing nonpolar GaN substrates to laser, LED and academic customers, Inlustra was founded by Drs Ben Haskell and Paul Fini in 2005 as a spin-off from the GaN research laboratories of the University of California at Santa Barbara (home to professors Shuji Nakamura, Jim Speck, and Steve DenBaars).

While a graduate student and then post-doctoral researcher under Nakamura (specializing in nonpolar GaN thick-film growth and defect reduction), CEO & chief engineer Haskell’s research yielded the first planar a-plane and m-plane GaN films grown by HVPE, as well as the first demonstrations of HVPE-based lateral epitaxial overgrowth for microstructural defect reduction in these films.

As a graduate student with DenBaars, chief technology officer Fini studied mechanisms of defect generation in MOCVD GaN films, as well as the use of lateral epitaxial overgrowth for dislocation reduction. He also acted as lead researcher of Nakamura’s Nitride Crystal Growth laboratory by overseeing laboratory research activities and equipment design.

Business mentoring is provided by board member Joseph Tumbler, who has experience as vice chairman of SunAmerica and president & CEO of Providian Capital Management, while Michael Crill of Atlas Accelerator (who has experience as a chief financial officer with high-tech firms) provides the board with start-up-focused finance and operations perspectives. Professor John Bowers (who has founded or co-founded several firms including Calient Networks and Terabit Technologies) is also on the board of directors, providing broad semiconductor fabrication and entrepreneurial expertise.

After winning the New Venture Competition of UCSB’s Technology Management Program, in 2006 Inlustra raised a Series A financing round, augmented by US government grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Defense (DoD). In 2007, after finishing build-out of facilities and construction of its first growth system, the firm began producing bulk GaN. Last year, Inlustra was awarded more DoD funding to further develop nonpolar bulk GaN, and produced the largest wafers reported to date.

The firm is now expanding its GaN production facilities and has recently started to fulfill customer orders. “Our proprietary crystal growth techniques significantly reduce the number of microscopic defects in the substrates, which will enable our customers to realize improved yields in their device production processes,” claims Fini. 

Inlustra is currently offering nonpolar GaN substrate between 5mm x 10mm and 10mm x 20mm in sizes, and aims to scale up its process to 2” over the next 9-12 months.

Search: Nonpolar and semipolar GaN substrates 

Visit: www.inlustra.com