Soitec and Silian enter joint development agreement

The companies’ joint development agreement aims at validating the manufacturability and enabling the commercialization of GaN template wafers using Silian’s sapphire substrates and Soitec’s unique HVPE technology. The partner companies plan to begin sampling GaN template wafers this year. Chantal Arena, vice president and general manager of Soitec Phoenix Labs, where the HVPE technology was developed, said, “Our strategy was to use production-proven silicon epitaxy equipment features and add our innovative gallium source and delivery system to create a high productivity HVPE equipment. We then successfully developed high growth rate processes that combined with our low cost precursor leads to a more cost effective GaN template than the ones produced by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE).” “Silian is excited to work with Soitec and adopt its HVPE technology,” said David Reid, COO of Silian. “With our extensive sapphire substrate manufacturing expansion activities in China, we are very well positioned to take advantage of this opportunity and offer these high quality templates in a cost effective manner to our sapphire substrate customers.”