BluGlass Ltd of Silverwater, Australia – which was spun off from the III-nitride department of Macquarie University in 2005 to develop a low-temperature process using remote plasma chemical vapor deposition (RPCVD) to grow materials including gallium nitride (GaN) and indium gallium nitride (InGaN) on glass substrates – has reported progress in key areas critical to the completion of its evaluation agreements with three leading companies.
Lumileds evaluation
BluGlass' chief technology & operations officer Dr Ian Mann recently returned from visiting LED maker Lumileds of San Jose, CA, USA in the USA to review recent RPCVD data and plan the next iterations of experiments critical to the collaboration milestones.
Veeco evaluation
Samples were recently prepared by BluGlass and shipped to epitaxial deposition and process equipment maker Veeco Instruments Inc of Plainview, NY, USA. Veeco has compiled recent data for both the green light-emitting diode (LED) and high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) projects, with both returning progressive results. Technical and commercial discussions with Veeco are ongoing.
HC SemiTek evaluation
Collaborative development work announced in April with LED epitaxy and chip maker HC SemiTek Corp of Wuhan, China (which supplies full-color ultra-high-brightness LED products throughout China) has now begun. The firms are exploring RPCVD's advantages for both green LEDs and aluminium nitride (AlN) to use in high-brightness LEDs. A planned set of experiments has been agreed for both projects. The 4" sapphire wafers have now arrived in Silverwater, and deposition of the RPCVD AlN films has begun. These will be shipped to HC SemiTek to fabricate into LEDs for testing. BluGlass has also just received the LED wafers for the green LED development, and this RPCVD work is beginning this week.
Uniformity and scaling project
The RPCVD chamber upgrade to improve RPCVD deposition uniformity is well underway, with the first upgraded system expected to be operational in July. The upgrade of the second, larger RPCVD system will be determined by the progress on industry evaluations (to ensure minimal interruption to ongoing projects with partners).
Other applications and interest
BluGlass says that it continues to receive interest from major industry participants looking at novel ways of exploiting RPCVD, and discussions are ongoing under confidentiality agreements.
