ALLOS Semiconductors won this year’s prestigious Compound Semiconductor Industry Substrates and Materials Award for showing breakdown voltages of > 1400 V on GaN-on-Si power semiconductor epiwafers. "We would like to thank all the people who voted for us and everyone who supported us in the last years” emphasizes ALLOS’ CEO Burkhard Slischka. “Since founding ALLOS in 2014 we have been nominated three times and this is the first title we can take home. We understand this as a great acknowledgment that we can stay ahead in innovation even as a fabless company. To receive this award is a great honor and an encouragement to move on."

ALLOS’ CEO Burkhard Slischka receiving the award. (Image: ALLOS Semiconductors)

ALLOS’ epiwafer technology for 1200 V power devices was also the topic of the presentation of Slischka’s talk at CS International conference in Brussels. Beside record breakdown voltages on both vertical and lateral test setups, he also showed the very low trapping effects of the material, which are crucial to achieving good dynamic device performance. Comparing future GaN-on-Si devices for 1200 V using this technology with the established SiC devices he discussed how GaN can benefit from advantages in both performance and cost and thus can advance into applications which until today are seen as being reserved for costly SiC MOSFET and less performant silicon IGBT devices.

Demand for power semiconductor devices at operating voltages above 600 V is driven by the need for efficient and affordable energy-saving applications and from electric vehicles. “We want to exploit this technological potential further” says ALLOS’ CTO Dr. Atsushi Nishikawa and continues “Therefore we are currently talking to various potential partners to develop the 1200 V technology into market readiness on epiwafer and device level”.

Hosted by Compound Semiconductor magazine, the peer-voted CS Industry Awards were established “to showcase the success of companies within the compound semiconductor industry”. The CS Industry Award is issued in a total of five categories. Beside the Substrates and Material Award ALLOS was also nominated for the High-volume Manufacturing Award together with Veeco for demonstrating < 1 nm emission wavelength uniformity on 200 mm GaN-on-Si epiwafers with ALLOS’ technology for micro LEDs on Veeco’s Propel MOCVD reactor.