As the world becomes digitalized and society demands increasingly faster, better and smarter electronic devices, the need for more energy efficient, faster and better performing Electronic Components and Systems (ECS) becomes paramount. These ECS are fully dependent on the semiconductor materials within, currently over 90% silicon (Si)-based. Pure Si technology can no longer cater to the needs placed upon ECS for power electronics and RF applications. Gallium Nitride (GaN) material properties make it the primary choice for future generations of energy-efficient, high performance power electronics devices, necessary to modernize the energy grid and allow for sustainable energy production and use. However, bulk GaN is prohibitively expensive and thus inaccessible to mainstream applications. The main approach to making the technology commercially viable, reducing its cost significantly, is growing GaN layers on other materials, such as Si. Today, this poses a major technical barrier: existing methods result in high defect densities in the GaN layers, offering a fraction of the efficiency of bulk GaN and therefore poor ECS performance. Switching to GaN-on-Si today is therefore not useful. Thus, the market needs a new affordable growth technique that minimizes GaN layer defects, crucially and effectively enhancing the performance of ECS: our EleGaNt technology.
The overall objectives of the EleGaNt project are to optimize our growth methods, in order to reproducibly guarantee bulk GaN performance at the price of GaN-on-Si, affordable to mainstream power and RF electronics applications. This will be achieved by incremental improvements to our growth sequence whilst scaling to 4” wafers. To demonstrate the scalability and integrability of our technology into industrial processes, we will enter joint development programmes with key industry players (i.e. customers) and thus validate EleGaNt in their fabs, whilst together mapping a realistic route towards 6” to 8” wafer manufacture. A key objective will also be the IP protection of our technology through patents and licensing in line with the execution of our commercialisation, communication and dissemination activities.
