MOCVD technology in research, development and mass production

Abstract

The recent years have seen a continuous transfer of exciting new technologies from basic research institutions to high-yield mass production and into our everyday lives. Devices made from novel semiconductor compounds can be found in products ranging from consumer electronics to high-speed backbone communication networks. This includes high-power infrared laser diodes for glass fiber applications, light-emitting diodes of ultra-high brightness for display and lighting, high-power blue and UV laser diodes for mass storage as well as all types of transistors made from silicon, III–V compounds and silicon-carbide. To facilitate the easy and straightforward transfer from research scale experimental setups to large-area substrates for mass production AIXTRON offers the whole scale of epitaxy solutions from single-wafer systems to large-scale production machines for up to 95 wafers. The easy configurability of the systems in terms of up-scaling of wafer sizes up to 7×6 in for phosphides and arsenides and up to 7×3 inch for nitride materials in concurrence with easy maintenance, high reproducibility and high uniformity across the wafer and from wafer-to-wafer, make the AIXTRON systems the ideal solution for mass production. The growth principle common to all AIXTRON MOCVD systems allows the easy up-scaling of established processes to larger configurations, even from single-wafer AIX 200 systems to production-type Planetary Reactors ®. Add-ons like in situ monitoring of the growth process by reflectometry (Filmetrics ®) or Reflectance Anisotropy Spectroscopy (Epi-RAS ®) help in a considerable reduction of the development time and costs, hence improving innovation cycles and the time-to-market of novel devices since the growth of the material can be monitored in real time.