GaN substrate market growing at 10% CAGR, reports Yole
The report “Bulk GaN substrate market 2017”, notes that while the Blu-ray segment which in the past was the GaN-based laser industry’s main driver, continues to decline, it is expected to be offset by nascent, growing segments like projectors (office projector, mobile pico projector, head-up display (HUD), etc.) and automotive lighting, leading to new growth opportunities for bulk GaN substrates.
In the LED market, improvements in GaN substrate manufacturing have lowered substrate prices enough for various niche LED applications. In addition to Soraa (US) and Panasonic (JP), this seems to have revived the interest of other LED manufacturers which are beginning to seriously consider using GaN substrates for either spotlighting or automotive lighting. New GaN-on-GaN LED players are expected in the market in the coming years.
This analysis pushes Yole to expect laser diodes and LEDs to drive the continuous growth of bulk GaN substrate demand. In 2016 the bulk GaN substrate market was estimated at about 60K wafers (Two Inch Equivalent (TIE)). Essentially all commercial GaN wafers are produced by hydride vapor-phase epitaxy (HVPE) technology, but details of the growth process and separation techniques vary by company. Other techniques, such as Na-flux or Ammonothermal, are still under development.
Meanwhile, the current GaN substrate market is heavily concentrated with three Japanese firms (Sumitomo Electric Industries, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation and Sciocs holding more than 85% of the market. Other Japanese and non-Japanese players are still in small-volume production or at a too early R&D stage to challenge incumbent players.
GaN-on-GaN is emerging
In the past, due to technical complexities, limited availability, and the high cost of native bulk GaN substrates for homoepitaxial growth, different foreign substrates were used to develop GaN-based devices for diverse applications.
GaN-on-sapphire was widely developed, benefiting from the LED industry’s growth over the past 25 years (the first GaN-on-sapphire LEDs hit the market in the 1990s). Sapphire wafer pricing has eroded significantly in the same period, and GaN-on-sapphire remains the dominant technology for LED applications.
GaN-on-SiC was among the first to be studied. Today the technology is widely used for GaN RF device manufacturing and LED manufacturing.
GaN-on-silicon arrived naturally, breaking the cost-point and making GaN an affordable technology. However, it faced a host of technical challenges, i.e. high lattice mismatch and high thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) mismatch. Academia and industry have invested heavily to resolve these technical issues, and today GaN-on-silicon is gradually being commercialized, particularly for power electronics applications.
Many other materials, i.e. polycrystalline AlN substrates, were proposed as an attractive alternative thanks to a more closely matched coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) with GaN. Other, more foreign materials (diamond, Ge, and ZnO) have also been studied, but these remain mostly in the R&D stage.
On the other hand, development of bulk GaN substrates was happening in parallel with other substrates. The progress of GaN substrates – specifically, wafer size/quality increase and wafer cost reduction – sees GaN-on-GaN technology entering more and more optoelectronic applications, and possibly electronics applications in the future.
The report confirms Yole Développement’s understanding of GaN-on-GaN technology’s maturity and its implementation in different applications (laser diode, LED, power electronics, and RF).
Visit Yole Développement at www.yole.fr
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