Showcasing III-V Success
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Volume 23 Issue 1 JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2017 @compoundsemi www.compoundsemiconductor.net Turbo-charging LiFi with semi-polar lasers Removing thermal barriers to GaN HEMTs Trumping incumbents with quantum dot lasers Uniting III-V tunnel FETs with silicon substrates Niobium nitride enables epitaxial lift-off of GaN IEDM Showcasing III-V success News Review, News Analysis, Features, Research Review, and much more... inside Free Weekly E News round up go to: www.compoundsemiconductor.net Front Cover CSv2RS.indd 1 30/01/2017 14:40 Untitled-5 1 29/06/2016 15:50 Viewpoint By Dr Richard Stevenson, Editor III-Vs get out and about THE PHRASE “electron devices” strikes me as a little odd. It University claimed a record seems to speak of a bygone era, when key building blocks for on-current for any III-V or electrical engineers included various forms of vacuum tube. silicon MOSFET. Their device Today, what we tend to talk about is the electronic device, sports indium-rich nanowires sometimes prefaced with the term solid-state. with a benefi cial distribution of interface states. Where the phrase “electron devices” does crop up is in the title to the annual IEEE Electron Devices Meeting, often referred to Northrop Grumman are as IEDM. It has been running for well over fi fty years. renowned for their pioneering efforts in InP terahertz I have no idea what technologies dominated the proceedings of technology, and at the latest the early meetings, but in the ten or more years that I’ve been IEDM Bill Deal claimed that following the papers given at IEDM silicon has been dominant. the team had produced the However, its stranglehold is weakening, with increasing content fi rst transistor gain at 1 THz of III-V success. or more. They have set the bar high: a gain of 10 dB is The most recent meeting continued this trend, with reports produced by their ten-stage of advances in GaN and SiC power devices, greater gain in amp. terahertz InP amplifi ers and III-V MOSFETs with record on- currents. Details are given in my round-up on p22: IEDM Breakthroughs in GaN power technology included a novel showcases compound semiconductor successes. GaN rectifi er by MIT that employed fi eld rings to slash leakage currents and boost the blocking voltage; and Panasonic During the last few years, there have been quite a few papers at described development of a gate-injected GaN transistor that IEDM detailing breakthroughs that could lead to improvement slashes switching losses, and the introduction of semi-polar in MOSFET technology through the introduction of III-Vs. These gates in vertical structures that increase the capability of high- higher mobility materials promise to maintain on-currents current, high-voltage switching. while reducing the supply voltage – and ultimately the power consumption per transistor. At the most recent meetings, there These papers at IEDM highlight the talent of researchers within were a relatively small number of papers on this topic – I’m this community. I look forward to informing you of many more not quite sure what to make of that – but a group from Lund advances in that vein through 2017. 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COPYRIGHT COMPOUND SEMICONDUCTOR l JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2017 l WWW.COMPOUNDSEMICONDUCTOR.NET 3 ViewPoint v5MG.indd 3 01/02/2017 11:19 Volume 23 ISSUE 1 2017 CONTENTS COVER STORY 22 IEDM showcases compound semiconductor successes 22 III-V devices deliver record on-currents, unprecedented gain at terahertz frequencies and far lower power-switching losses 32 Removing thermal barriers to GaN HEMTs Power densities produced by GaN HEMTs can reach their full potential by integrating these devices 44 GaN on anything with diamond and microfluidic cooling Giving GaN freedom from SiC with Nb2N 38 Uniting III-V tunnel 54 InP lasers: Trumping FETs with silicon the incumbents with Template-assisted selective epitaxy enables the construction of ultra-low power III-V TFETs on quantum dots silicon substrates Very high data rates and tremendous temperature stability make the InP quantum dot laser a very promising contender for tomorrow’s optical networks 60 Turbocharging LiFi with semi-polar lasers A record-breaking bandwidth makes the violet 60 semi-polar laser well suited for visible light communication 4 WWW.COMPOUNDSEMICONDUCTOR.NET l JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2017 l COPYRIGHT COMPOUND SEMICONDUCTOR Contents v2.indd 4 01/02/2017 11:20 news news analysis research review 06 LED price drop is driving away 16 Time to switch? 66 Annealing boosts green laser manufacturers efficiency 18 A faster slice 07 Peregrine introduces next 67 Nano-antenna enhance terahertz generation UltraCMOS platform 20 Beyond the horizon sensitivity 08 Growing thicker, more boron-rich 68 Smoothing non-polar AlGaN films BAlN 10 Lumileds claims efficiency record with Luxeon MX multi-die emitter 11 Defence and aerospace continue to dominate GaN device market 12 Philips to sell majority share of Lumileds to US firm 06 16 32 COPYRIGHT COMPOUND SEMICONDUCTOR l JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2017 l WWW.COMPOUNDSEMICONDUCTOR.NET 5 Contents v2.indd 5 01/02/2017 11:20 s news review LED price drop is driving Aixtron announces away manufacturers new CEO AIXTRON SE has announced that the current CEO of the company, Martin ALTHOUGH residential and commercial Goetzeler, is leaving the company at industries are widely adopting energy- the end of his contract on February efficient LEDs, the drop in LED prices 28, 2017. is driving away manufacturers because of decreased profitability, dramatically Former Aixtron Executive Board dislocating and restructuring the solid- Member and current Supervisory state lighting marketplace, says a new Board Chairman, Kim Schindelhauer, US National Academies of Sciences, will take on Goetzeler’s duties as CEO Engineering, and Medicine report. and CFO on an interim basis starting March 1, 2017, until a successor Since the last Academies report in 2013 warns that the successful proliferation is found. The strategy adopted will that assessed the state of solid-state of such applications would not focus on continue unchanged. lighting, the annual residential installation the reduction of energy consumption of LED bulbs has increased six fold alone, but the US Department of Energy Goetzeler, whose responsibilities between 2012 and 2014, from 13 million (DOE) should think of ways to continue included strategy, finances, and also to 78 million. to improve their efficiency, given their personnel as industrial relations inevitable growth. director, is leaving the company for The report Assessment of Advanced personal reasons and in agreement Solid-State Lighting, Phase 2 also cites The committee recommended with the company’s Supervisory the emergence of new applications for developing strategies for supporting Board. solid-state lighting that have the potential broader research that enables to create new markets and commercial more efficient use of light across all “During Mr.