AIXTRON SE today announced an order from mainland China. HC SemiTek placed an order for six additional CRIUS® Gallium Nitride epitaxial growth reactors. The six machines in the 31x2-inch wafer configuration have been delivered to the company’s modern facility in Wuhan.

The CRIUS® facilitates the ongoing evolution of the deposition of wide bandgap compound semiconductors by extending the user’s control and accuracy while achieving the highest efficiencies demanded by the market. It supports multiple wafers, throughput and safety with ergonomics and lowest running costs. AIXTRON’s CRIUS® enables operators to meet the challenge of high brightness LED manufacture with performance and economics.

With the rapid expansion of LED-based displays, backlighting and solid state illumination, manufacturers are choosing solutions that support flexibility and headroom to meet the diverse demands of volume applications.

According to Dr Rong Liu, President of HC SemiTek, “The CRIUS® enables significant operational flexibility and enhanced growth efficiency for state of the art UHB GaN LEDs. Our technology team is highly talented with a rich research experience gained from world leading research institutes. We now wish to extend our manufacturing capacity quickly and conveniently as per our strategic expansion roadmap for the displays environment. While this poses many challenges for providers – how to efficiently create precision epiwafers at very low cost – management through the responsive AIXTRON support team will enable optimized process set-up without incurring project delay.”

The past year has been a boom year for MOCVD LED product development and manufacture with in particular many major deployments in China. In addition to major companies testing the market for new business in areas such as residential lighting and mobile display applications, start-ups are making significant investments. At the forefront of this wave is the AIXTRON range of precision deposition equipment. Tools such as the CRIUS® are providing all of the advantages for established and new clients to rapidly ramp up market entry.