Plainview, N.Y., Nov. 8, 2018—Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO) and ALLOS Semiconductors GmbH announced today the completion of another phase of their mutual effort to provide the industry with leading GaN-on-Silicon epiwafer technology for microLED production. The purpose of the companies’ most recent collaboration was to demonstrate the reproducibility of ALLOS’ 200 mm GaN-on-Si epiwafer technology on Veeco’s Propel® MOCVD reactor when producing epiwafers for many prominent global consumer electronics companies.
“To bring microLED technology
into production, simply presenting champion values for a single metric is insufficient.
It is essential to achieve the whole set of specifications for each wafer with
excellent repeatability and yield,” said Peo Hansson, Ph.D., senior vice president
and general manager of Veeco’s Compound Semiconductor business unit. “This successful joint effort reaffirms the power of combining Veeco’s superior MOCVD expertise
with ALLOS’ GaN-on-Silicon epiwafer technology to provide customers a novel,
proven and reliable approach to accelerate microLED adoption.”
Sorting and binning are standard
methods to achieve wavelength consistency for conventional LEDs. But microLEDs
are too small and numerous to be sorted and binned; therefore, the uniformity
of the epitaxial deposition is even more critical. The most important success
factor for turning the promise of microLED displays into mass production
reality is to achieve extremely good emission wavelength uniformity, which eliminates
the need to test and sort individual microLED chips. Depending on the
application and mass transfer approach, the target requirements of the industry
are between +/-1 nm and +/-4 nm bin (min/max) on the epiwafer. Through this collaborative
project, Veeco and ALLOS further improved the critical wavelength uniformity
with the best wafer having a standard deviation of just 0.85 nm, representing an
industry first on a production system.
“Veeco and ALLOS validated
wafer-to-wafer reproducibility with an average wavelength standard deviation
for all wafers of 1.21 nm and the peak wavelength within a +/- 0.5 nm range. With
these results we made another significant leap towards the +/-1 nm bin goal on an
epiwafer,” said Burkhard Slischka, CEO of ALLOS. “Our technology is already
available on 200 mm wafer diameter, which enables the use of low-cost and high
yield silicon lines for microLED chip production. Additionally, we have a clear
roadmap to enable 300 mm.”
Innovators in display technology are focusing on microLED as the next significant technological shift. According to research firm Yole Développement, the market for microLED displays could potentially reach 330 million units by 2025. This optimism is fueled by the promise of microLED technology (sub-100 micrometer edge length) which is considered the critical enabler to achieving the ultimate display with much lower power consumption. However, development of such displays has been hindered by high material costs and low yield and throughput of microLED mass transfer technology. This joint technical effort effectively addresses these challenges as Veeco and ALLOS continue to work with customers to further improve GaN-on-Si epiwafer and microLED mass transfer technology.
The partners will showcase details
of their breakthrough achievements at the International Workshop on Nitride
Semiconductors (IWN) in Kanazawa, Japan on Nov. 12, 2018.
About Veeco
Veeco (NASDAQ: VECO) is a leading manufacturer of innovative semiconductor process equipment. Our proven MOCVD, lithography, laser annealing, ion beam and single wafer etch and clean technologies play an integral role in producing LEDs for solid-state lighting and displays, and in the fabrication of advanced semiconductor devices. With equipment designed to maximize performance, yield and cost of ownership, Veeco holds technology leadership positions in all these served markets. To learn more about Veeco’s innovative equipment and services, visit www.veeco.com.
About ALLOS Semiconductors
ALLOS is an IP licensing and technology engineering company which is helping clients from the semiconductor industry worldwide to master GaN-on-Si technology and unleash its benefits. ALLOS is providing licenses to its technology know-how and patents as well as transferring the technology to its customers’ MOCVD reactors. In addition, ALLOS is delivering customer specific solutions as well as consulting services for next generation GaN-on-Si development challenges. www.allos-semiconductors.com
This press release is available for download (pdf format) in English or Chinese (simplified).
