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News

10 September 2007

 

Kyma partners with Caracal and EOC to improve nonpolar GaN substrates

In response to demand for low-defect-density nonpolar native gallium nitride substrates, Kyma Technologies Inc of Raleigh, NC, USA has partnered with Caracal Inc of Ford City, PA (which develops crystalline silicon carbide technology) and the Penn State Electro-Optics Center (EOC) of Freeport, PA, to help it work through a backend process bottleneck.

Kyma was spun out of the Materials Science and Engineering Department of North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 1998. The firm’s products include ultralow-defect-density native (free-standing) gallium nitride in customer-defined orientation including polar (c-plane Ga-face or N-face) and non-polar (a-plane and m-plane), gallium nitride and aluminum nitride templates grown on sapphire and other substrates, and ultrahigh-purity polycrystalline GaN.

“We joined EOC’s Electro-Optics Alliance (EOA) early in 2006 and have enjoyed a number of very positive collaborative interactions with EOC ever since,” says Kyma’s CEO, Dr Keith Evans. EOC’s Dr Bill Everson has experience in single-crystal semiconductor processing across a broad spectrum of materials, he adds. “Our relationship with Caracal began earlier this year and is already very valuable, due to the energy and experience of Dr Olle Kordina, Caracal’s founder and CTO, and Dr Igor Agafonov, Caracal’s semiconductor processing expert.”

“We are pleased to be able to respond to our customers’ growing needs for high-quality nonpolar GaN with improved crystalline orientation control,” adds Kyma’s chief operating officer, Dr Ed Preble. “Our partnerships with both Caracal and EOC have proven to be of great value in terms of increasing our effective manufacturing capability and capacity.”

*Dr Drew Hanser, Kyma’s CTO and VP of business development, will give an invited talk on the firm’s nonpolar GaN substrate manufacturing technology at the International Workshop on Bulk Nitride Semiconductors (IWBNS-V) in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 24-28 September.

See related items:

Tanya Paskova joins Kyma Technologies

UCSB achieves high-efficiency non-polar GaN LEDs at improved output power

Kyma's native GaN substrates merit defense contract

Army funds Kyma to develop non-polar GaN substrates

Visit IWBNS: http://iwbns.jpn.org

Visit Kyma: http://www.kymatech.com

Visit Caracal: http://www.caracalsemi.com

Visit EOC: http://www.electro-optics.org