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Nitride substrate maker Kyma Technologies Inc of Raleigh, NC, USA has announced recent volume shipment of 2” diameter c-plane aluminum nitride (AlN) template substrates.

Kyma’s AlN templates are available with a 0.5 micron thick AlN layer of highly oriented AlN deposited on sapphire, or other substrates, and up to 100mm in diameter, for use as a substrate for the production of several different types of nitride semiconductor devices.

The manufacturing processes used by the firm to make AlN templates benefit from intellectual property (IP) exclusively licensed from North Carolina State University (from which Kyma was spun out in 1998), as well as additional patent-pending IP developed at the firm.

“Kyma’s nitride-based templates offer a low cost substrate approach to achieving a dislocation density of 10^7 cm-² while eliminating the need for expensive buffer layer processes that are difficult to control,” says Dr Ed Preble, chief operating officer. Use of the AlN templates offers an alternative to traditional two-temperature or direct nucleation schemes on sapphire, silicon carbide (SiC) or silicon substrates, he adds.

“Our AlN templates have been shown to present excellent starting surfaces for subsequent growth of GaN (gallium nitride) layers by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and also by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE),” says Dr Drew Hanser, chief technology officer and VP business development. “We also have customers testing our AlN templates in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-based processes and we are confident about the results.”

Many of Kyma’s AlN templates are produced on c-plane sapphire, which leaves the AlN with a c-axis preferred orientation that possesses ideal properties for nucleating GaN thin films. Other combinations of AlN orientation and substrate orientation are also available. Recent shipments include a-plane oriented AlN grown on r-plane sapphire, c-plane AlN grown on conductive SiC, as well as c-plane AlN grown on 100mm silicon.

Kyma offers flexible business models that can be tailored to customers, the firm says. “Speed and flexibility are of key importance,” says Dr Keith Evans, president and CEO. “While we are happy to simply supply the substrates, we are also happy to establish AlN template manufacturing capacity at the customer’s site and to subsequently maintain either a close or a distant relationship, depending on exactly what the customer desires,” he adds.

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