Veeco and ALLOS technical collaboration completes another phase towards 200mm GaN-on-Si micro-LED production

Epitaxial deposition and process equipment maker Veeco Instruments Inc of Plainview, NY, USA and IP licensing & technology engineering firm ALLOS Semiconductors GmbH of Dresden, Germany have completed another phase of their mutual effort to provide gallium nitride on silicon (GaN-on-Si) epiwafer technology for micro-LED production.

The purpose of their most recent collaboration was to demonstrate the reproducibility of ALLOS’ 200mm GaN-on-Si epiwafer technology on Veeco’s Propel metal-organic chemical vapor depsotion (MOCVD) reactor when producing epiwafers for many prominent global consumer electronics companies.

“To bring micro-LED technology into production, simply presenting champion values for a single metric is insufficient. It is essential to achieve the whole set of specifications for each wafer with excellent repeatability and yield,” comments Peo Hansson Ph.D., senior VP & general manager of Veeco’s Compound Semiconductor business unit. “This successful joint effort reaffirms the power of combining Veeco’s superior MOCVD expertise with ALLOS’ GaN-on-silicon epiwafer technology to provide customers a novel, proven and reliable approach to accelerate micro-LED adoption,” he adds.

Sorting and binning are standard methods to achieve wavelength consistency for conventional LEDs. But micro-LEDs are too small and numerous to be sorted and binned, so the uniformity of the epitaxial deposition is even more critical. The most important success factor for turning the promise of micro-LED displays into mass-production reality is to achieve extremely good emission wavelength uniformity, which eliminates the need to test and sort individual micro-LED chips, say the firms. Depending on the application and mass-transfer approach, the target requirements of the industry are between +/-1nm and +/-4nm bin (min/max) on the epiwafer. Through this collaborative project, Veeco and ALLOS say they have further improved the critical wavelength uniformity, with the best wafer having a standard deviation of just 0.85nm (an industry first on a production system).

“Veeco and ALLOS validated wafer-to-wafer reproducibility with an average wavelength standard deviation for all wafers of 1.21nm and the peak wavelength within a +/-0.5nm range,” says ALLOS’ CEO Burkhard Slischka. “With these results we made another significant leap towards the +/-1nm bin goal on an epiwafer,” he adds. “Our technology is already available on 200mm wafer diameter, which enables the use of low-cost and high-yield silicon lines for micro-LED chip production. Additionally, we have a clear roadmap to enable 300mm.”

Innovators in display technology are focusing on micro-LEDs as the next significant technological shift, say the firms. The market for micro-LED displays could reach 330 million units by 2025, according to research firm Yole Développement. This optimism is fueled by the promise of micro-LED technology (sub-100μm edge length), which is considered to be the critical enabler to achieving the ultimate display with much lower power consumption. However, development of such displays has been hindered by high material costs and low yield and throughput of micro-LED mass-transfer technology. Veeco and ALLOS say that their joint technical effort effectively addresses these challenges as they continue to work with customers to further improve GaN-on-Si epiwafer and micro-LED mass-transfer technology.

Veeco and ALLOS are showcasing details of their achievements on 12 November at the International Workshop on Nitride Semiconductors (IWN 2018) in Kanazawa, Japan.

See related items:

Veeco and ALLOS demo 200mm GaN-on-Si wafers for blue/green micro-LED adoption

Tags: Veeco Azzurro GaN-on-Si MOCVD

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