Growth of Polyhedron-Shaped Gallium Nitride Bulk Crystals

Brief Description

A method to grow polyhedron-shaped GaN bulk crystals, which are not possible using existing growth methods.

Background

In order to eliminate the problems arising from heteroepitaxial growth, gallium nitride wafers sliced from bulk GaN crystals must be used. A new technique for growing bulk GaN crystals is based on using supercritical ammonia, which has high solubility of source materials, and which has high transport speed of dissolved precursors. This ammonothermal method has a potential for growing large GaN crystals. However, existing technology is limited by the crystal size, because the growth rate is not fast enough to obtain large crystals.

Description

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have developed a method to grow polyhedron-shaped GaN bulk crystals, which are not possible using existing growth methods. This shape of GaN crystals has an advantage over the existing platelet-shaped GaN since GaN wafers of any orientation can be obtained simply by slicing the polyhedron.

Advantages

• Allows simple production of GaN wafers of any orientations

• Less impurities on the crystals compared to previous grow methods

• Faster than previous methods and easily scalable

• Cost effective

Applications

• Gallium nitride wafers    

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Patent Status