SAMCO Inc of Kyoto, Japan, a supplier of plasma etch, chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and surface treatment systems to compound semiconductors device makers, has announced metal-organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) demonstration capability on the new GaN-550 gallium nitride on silicon (GaN-on-Si) system from Valence Process Equipment Inc (VPE) of Branchburg, NJ, USA.
Following an agreement last April, SAMCO sells and distributes VPE‘s GaN-550, which is equipped with a 550mm-diameter carrier for mass production of GaN power devices. The demo system will be available for customer demonstrations at SAMCO’s R&D facility in early 2015.
SAMCO is expanding its range of dry etching and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) systems for wide-bandgap semiconductor applications such as LEDs, laser diodes and RF devices, with the firm rekoning that the processing of nitride semiconductors is one of its strengths.
VPE is a start-up company, providing MOCVD systems for GaN-based LEDs. Its GaN-500 MOCVD system employs a unique reaction chamber design and can reduce gas consumption by up to 40 % compared with other MOCVD systems, it is claimed.
SAMCO installed a new GaN-550 MOCVD system, which was developed from the GaN-500 (launched in 2011) and is claimed to have low process gas consumption, high-speed gas switching, and superior temperature control. The specially designed gas injector requires less frequent reactor cleaning, increasing system availability and uptime. The GaN-550 system can grow more than 5μm/hour of GaN at the uniformity of less than 1%. While the carrier diameter of the GaN-500 is 500mm, the carrier diameter of the GaN-550 is 550mm for higher throughput, accommodating up to 72x2 inch, 20x4-inch, 7x6-inch or 4x8-inch wafers per batch.
SAMCO aims to utilize the GaN-550 demo system to accelarate sales of VPE’s MOCVD systems for GaN-power device manufacturing, adding that it now provides a turn-key one-stop solution‘for nitride semiconductors, comprising MOCVD, PECVD, dry etch and dry cleaning processes.
