News

22 February 2010

 

Aixtron’s new-generation AIX G5 achieves productivity targets at Epistar

Deposition equipment maker Aixtron AG of Aachen-Herzogenrath, Germany says that its next-generation MOCVD platform AIX G5 HT has demonstrated high-quality gallium nitride (GaN) deposition at very high growth rates and high pressure above 600mbar, as well as superior GaN/InGaN uniformities. The epitaxial runs were performed at Epistar Corp in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Taiwan consecutively without reactor baking or swapping of any parts. The reactor is now being transferred into mass production.

Aixtron says that the AIX G5 HT provides the largest wafer capacity (56x2”/ 14x4”/ 8x6”) and has revolutionary new reactor design features that allow high growth rates and consecutive runs without baking or swapping of parts, more than doubling throughput compared to the previous-generation system. 

The firm says that the new reactor design provides high process flexibility combined with superior process stability. It also claims that AIX G5 HT systems provide the fastest time to production with the highest reproducibility from tool-to-tool, enabling a faster production ramp up compared to other reactors, with easy copy-and-paste process transfer (a key factor in a rapidly booming market with limited numbers of available process experts).

“Aixtron was committed to the challenging targets for the new reactor when we started our cooperation,” comments Epistar’s president Dr Ming-Jiunn Jou. “The uniformities seen so far have given us confidence to significantly improve our production yield on this new MOCVD reactor. We are now very keen to bring this new tool into production and to benefit from its improvements,” he adds.

“I am very pleased to see this fast progress at Epistar, as it is in accordance with our expectations,” says Gerd Strauch, VP corporate product design & engineering, and responsible for Planetary Reactor Development at Aixtron. “It confirms the excellent target-oriented design of our new reactor chamber, and it is a proof of our advanced CFD modelling and system qualification at our own laboratory,” he adds. “We have successfully transferred the epitaxial growth performance from our laboratory 1:1 to the system at Epistar’s site.”

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See: Aixtron Company Profile

Search: Aixtron MOCVD Epistar GaN

Visit: www.aixtron.com

Visit: www.epistar.com.tw