GaN/Si material provided for 150mm RF power product line

They have jointly collaborated on establishing a production process based on EpiGaN’s differentiating GaN/Si material technology with in-situ grown SiN passivation. They will cooperate directly to move this technology to 150mm diameter wafers, targeting future 5G wireless communication standards, for which OMMIC last week announced a large project with a 5G equipment supplier.

The advent of the 5G era is going to revolutionise long-distance communications. To provide users with exceptionally high-speed wire­less connections, ultra-low latency and enhanced mobile broadband, a new semiconductor technology – GaN – is required in applications such as multimedia streaming, autonomous driving, and machine-to-machine communication with billions of interconnected sensors or Internet-of-Things, to transmit and receive RF signals in the utmost efficient way.   

“EpiGaN is honoured to team up with OMMIC for scaling up to a 150mm GaN/Si process line based on EpiGaN’s differentiating technology addressing products for 5G,” commented EpiGaN CEO Dr Marianne Germain. “We offer many attractive USPs for RF power, which add value to device designers, such as in-situ SiN passivation for enhanced device robustness, or very low RF losses up to 100GHz. We are proud of the high-frequency capability of our material, which enables a very cost-efficient and energy-efficient GaN technology for the higher frequency bands targeted by 5G.”

“The next-generation 5G standard will require GaN as an enabling semiconductor technology to provide a step-up in performance,” stated OMMIC CEO Dr Marc Rocchi. "Only then will the experience for the end user be superb. Teaming up with EpiGaN is an essential element of our growth strategy and it enables us to meet the required volume and quality levels for our 5G GaN MMICs.”