Veeco Instruments Inc. and ALLOS Semiconductors GmbH reported the completion of another phase of their collaborative effort to provide GaN-on-Silicon epiwafer technology for micro LED production.
In the most recent phase of the effort, the companies demonstrated the reproducibility of ALLOS’ 200 mm GaN-on-Si epiwafer technology using Veeco’s Propel® MOCVD reactor to produce epiwafers for numerous global consumer electronics companies.
The companies point out that micro LEDs are too small and numerous for the sorting and binning processes of conventional LED fabrication. For this reason, deposition uniformity is critical. Furthermore, the firms noted that the most important factor in bringing micro LED displays into mass production reality is achieving extremely good emission wavelength uniformity, which thereby eliminates the need for testing and sorting individual micro LED chips.
ALLOS and Veeco Improved Wavelength Uniformity
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. This 0.85 nm deviation is below even the targeted range of wavelength deviation of between +/-1 nm and +/-4 nm.
“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.”
Peo Hansson, Ph.D., senior vice president and general manager of Veeco’s Compound Semiconductor business unit said, “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.”
