AIXTRON AG today announced that its next generation MOCVD Platform AIX G5 HT has demonstrated high quality GaN deposition at very high growth rates and high pressure above 600mbar and superior GaN/InGaN uniformities. The epitaxial runs were performed at Epistar Corporation, located in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Taiwan consecutively without reactor baking or swapping of any parts. The MOCVD reactor is now being transferred into mass production.

The Next Generation Platform AIX G5 HT provides the largest wafer capacity (56x2” / 14x4” / 8x6”) and comes with revolutionary new reactor design features that allow high growth rates and consecutive runs without baking or swapping of parts. In total, this results in a more than doubled high quality throughput compared to the previous generation. 

The new reactor design provides highest process flexibility combined with superior process stability. AIX G5 HT systems provide fastest time to production with highest reproducibility from tool-to-tool, which enables a faster production ramp up as compared to any other reactor, with easy copy-and-paste process transfer, a key factor in a rapidly booming market with limited numbers of available process experts.

Dr. Ming-Jiunn Jou, President of Epistar, comments: “AIXTRON was committed to the challenging targets for the new reactor when we started our cooperation. Now we are amazed how quickly AIXTRON has met its commitments. Furthermore, the uniformities seen so far have given us confidence to significantly improve our production yield on this new MOCVD reactor. We are now very keen to bring this new tool into production and to benefit from its improvements.”

Gerd Strauch, Vice President Corporate Product Design & Engineering, and responsible for Planetary Reactor Development at AIXTRON AG comments: “I am very pleased to see this fast progress at Epistar, as it is in accordance with our expectations. It confirms the excellent target-oriented design of our new reactor chamber, and it is a proof of our advanced CFD modelling and system qualification at our own laboratory. We have successfully transferred the epitaxial growth performance from our laboratory 1:1 to the system at Epistar’s site.”