Savlus joins forces to achieve mass production of 6-inch semipolar gallium nitride

In the process of Micro-LED commercialization, material innovation is becoming the key to breaking through performance bottlenecks. Recently, Saphlux, the industry's leading semiconductor materials company, announced a milestone - the company has successfully achieved large-scale mass production of 6-inch semi-polar gallium nitride LEDs.

This progress not only marks that semipolar materials have officially crossed over from the laboratory stage, but will also directly empower the next generation of ultra-small-sized, high-speed Micro-LEDs. For a long time, high-quality semipolar gallium nitride materials have been limited to small sizes and laboratory stages due to their extremely high growth difficulty.

Saphlux has successfully grown high-quality semi-polar epitaxial layers on standard large-size sapphire substrates through its unique defect control technology.

As shown in the figure below, a 6-inch semi-polar gallium nitride wafer prepared on a sapphire substrate - the mass production of 6-inch wafers means that the number of Micro-LED chips that can be produced from a single wafer increases geometrically. With mature back-end processes, the unit cost of preparing application products will be significantly reduced. At the same time, this product can also be used in the field of AR micro-displays to improve the luminous efficiency of small-size Micro-LEDs under high current.

Figure 1: Saphlux successfully achieved mass production of 6-inch semi-polar gallium nitride wafers

In the field of Micro-LED optical communications that has attracted much attention, Saphlux's semi-polar technology has brought disruptive performance leaps. Joint test results between Saphlux and a university showed that at the same current density, Micro-LEDs based on semipolar gallium nitride demonstrated a response speed far exceeding that of traditional c-plane LEDs: the -3dB bandwidth jumped from 170 MHz of traditional c-plane LEDs to 690 MHz, achieving a nearly 4-fold increase in bandwidth.

Figure 2: Joint test data from a university: Semi-polar Micro-LED achieves a nearly 4-fold increase in bandwidth

Dr. Song Jie, CTO of Saphlux, pointed out: "This performance leap is mainly attributed to the effective suppression of the quantum confinement Stark effect by the semi-polar crystal structure. In semi-polar materials, the built-in electric field is greatly weakened, and the overlapping area of electrons and holes is increased, which significantly accelerates the photon recombination rate.

As shown in the carrier dynamics analysis diagram, semipolar materials exhibit a shorter carrier lifetime than traditional c-plane materials. This faster recombination rate directly increases the modulation frequency of the chip, thereby supporting higher-speed data transmission. "

Figure 3: Saphlux semipolar gallium nitride exhibits a shorter carrier lifetime, that is, a faster recombination rate, which is the technical cornerstone of high-speed communications

With high brightness in ultra-small size and the above-mentioned high-speed communication advantages, Saphlux's semi-polar series products have attracted close attention from global technology giants. This series of mass-produced products has recently been introduced to many leading overseas companies for integration of new generation AR micro-displays and optical communication modules.