First 6in InP substrates for lower-cost opto components and microelectronic integration
3 May 2002 -- Semiconductor wafer supplier AXT Inc of Fremont, CA, USA says that in the June quarter it will ship the world's first sample quantities of 6in-diameter indium phosphide substrates. The largest InP wafers currently commercially available are 4in.
President and CEO Morris Young claims high uniformity and low defect density and therefore improved device performance and better production yield due to AXT's vertical gradient freeze (VGF) crystal growth technology, which has made in-roads in recent years compared to conventional liquid encapsulated Czochralski (LEC) growth.
Larger-diameter substrates can reduce the cost of manufacturing microelectronic and optoelectronic components, including lasers and detectors for fibre-optic systems operating at wavelengths of 1,000nm and longer and data rates of 40Gbit/s (SONET OC768) and higher, for which many start-ups have been springing up over the last few years.
In particular, compared to other semiconductor materials, indium phosphide enables large-scale integration of electronic and optoelectronic functions, allowing device performance and economies unavailable to other substrate materials, AXT claims.