GaN Technologies and Developments:

Status and Trends

M. Buchta1, K. Beilenhoff1, H. Blanck1, J. Thorpe1, R. Behtash1,
S. Heckmann2, H. Jung1, Z. Ouarch2, M. Camiade2
1
United Monolithic Semiconductors GmbH, Ulm, Germany
2
United Monolithic Semiconductors S.A.S, Orsay, France
Email: michael.buchta@ums-ulm.de

Abstract-Today the European GaN interest is slightly shifting
away from academic research to development and
industrialization of technology, devices and applications. The
recent public funding was started to accelerate the transition
from academica to industry on all levels like EC, national and by
Space Agencies. In the paper the today’s running projects and
the upcoming trends will be described.
I. INTRODUCTION
Based on a long history in the III-V semiconductor
technologies for RF applications Europe stimulated the
research on GaN for high power RF devices. Although in the
past USA and Japan only have been seen to be at the forefront
of this technology, Europe take its capabilities to find its own
way. A large community was built including Academia,
Industry and National research institutes and is involved in the
development of GaN devices for several applications. This
work will try to summarize these activities and give the
current status of European GaN technology and will take a
look on the upcoming trends.
Since a couple of years the GaN activity in Europe has
increased dramatically. The space community, in Europe
focused in the European Space Agency (ESA), has put this
technology on their roadmap for use in microwave payload [1].
But the interest is not limited to space applications, also the
European Commission decided to stimulate research in this
field and several projects were hosted during the Sixth
Framework programme for Research (FP6) and continued in
the actual FP7 programme. Additionally most National
Research Programmes within Europe supported GaN activities
in a broad way and pushed the results from academic research
towards commercial use.
crystalline silicon SiC and ULTRAGAN [4,5] into
InAlN/GaN epitaxy. Both were focusing on reaching high
power and high power density devices for telecom
applications. In the frame of actual FP7, the running project
MORGaN [6] looks for GaN substrates for harsh
environments like temperatures higher than 500°C to be used
in sensors or for telecommunication. The high power density
of GaN causes a high heat flow, which is addressed by the
project AGAPAC [7]. New packaging materials are
investigated to enable high power density if only passive
cooling is desired, like in space applications but not limited to.
Diamond composite materials and nano tubes are being
developed and tested finally with large GaN devices. First
promising results will be presented [8].
For space application it is very important to ensure high
reliability, resulting in a minimum life time under space
condition. This is addressed by the ESA funded project
GREAT2 [9], which aim to establish a suitable European
supply chain for GaN devices. There are several other projects
like “GaN Technology for Robust Communication Receivers”
[10] targeting space applications, which often use European
industrial GaN foundry services.
Additionally the European Defense Agency (EDA) is
running KORRIGAN [11,12], where the defense applications
are addressed, starting from substrate and epitaxy up to
technology and circuit and end at system level. Fig. 1 shows
the partners of KORRIGAN and their role in the project.

II. PROGRAMS
A. European Projects
The European projects are divided into the ones funded by
EC through the FP7, related on space and terrestric
applications, and the ones by ESA, which targets the space
applications. During FP6, the project HYPHEN [2,3] Fig. 1: KORRIGAN members and their role within this project.
investigates into alternative substrates for GaN like poly-
 There are other GaN related projects runnning focusing on
frequency ranges below 10MHz as requested by automotive
industry for electric propulsion or DC/DC coonverters for use
in photovoltaic systems, which is not addresseed by this work.
B. National projects
The national projects are thematically oriented to the
European wide road maps, but are more conncentrated on the
available resources in each European countryy. Thus not only
one source in Europe is funded which has m major benefits for
the ongoing industrialization and leads to specialization of
each competitor.
In Germany the Federal Government fosterr several projects
in the frame of “GaN-Elektronik”, which aim med the research
of epitaxy and technology for GaN transistors for
communication and the related non lineaar measurement
technique. The outcome should be transsferred later to
industrial oriented user. The GANIND projecct, as an example,
was focused on the GaN technology for higgh power devices
suitable for cellular base transceiver stations (BTS) [13].
In Italy several projects targeting space appplications in x-
band are running, funded by Italian Ministry of Research and
Technology (MiUR) and the Italian Nationnal Physics Labs
(NPL).
In France GaN related projects are mainlly funded by the
French General Delegation for Ordnance (DG GA).
Great Britain, Sweden and Spain have seveeral institutes and
companies working in the GaN related domaain, but the most
of them are also involved into the European prrojects.
In general the research for GaN has left thee domain of basic
technologies like substrates, epitaxy and proocess and is now
more and more shifting to device-relatedd questions like
reliability or improvement of efficiency or seeking for new
applications like robust LNAs.
III. MATERIALS
A. Substrates
For the use of GaN two major substrate maaterials have been
favored: Si and SiC. While Si promises low ccost at very large
diameter, which is still under investigation beecause of a quite
high lattice mismatch of 17% and the large thhermal expansion
coefficient mismatch of 54% [14], for RF poower applications
mainly the semi insulation SiC (s.i. SiC) is used for further
developments. The smaller lattice mismatch of 3.5% to GaN
and the very high thermal conductivity promiises reliable high
power GaN devices. The SiC material is widely used in
optoelectronic like LED, but this is the 6H SiC C, which slightly
differ in the substrate growth from the s.i. SiiC [15]. Sapphire
and Diamond are also good candidates to act as a substrate for
GaN, but compared to the other materialss there are less
advantages to Si and SiC, esp. then takinng the cost into
account. The lattice mismatch forced the inntroduction of a
nucleation buffer layer, consisting of AlN fo for SiC e.g. [16].
Today the US company Cree is the leading oone in delivering
high quality 3” and 4” s.i. SiC sub
bstrates, but there are very
promising European competitors ahhead.
B. Epitaxy
Various research insitutes could
d cover the need of even
exploratory structures like AlInN//GaN [17]. For the work
horse AlGaN/GaN epitaxy for HEMT several European
sources offer 100mm and 150mm m diameter material. Even
research institutes offer epi wafeer grown in a multiwafer
MOCVD with reasonable homogen ny sheet resistance, see Fig.
2.
Fig. 2: Sheet resistance homogeneity of a 100mm AlGaN/GaN HEMT
epilayer, grown in a 12x 3” multiwafer MOCVD.
M Courtesty of IAF
[18].
The sheet resistance shows a variance of 0.9% of 500
Ohm/sq over the surface [18]. Sev veral research projects are
covering the use of larger diam meter of GaN on SiC at
reasonable quality to ensure a Euro
opean supply chain for low
and for high volume needs.
IV. TECHNOL
LOGY
First technologies were develo oped by several research
institutes within Europe. Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and
Great Britain played a great role during this time, several
universities and research instituttes from these countries
published their contribution to th he GaN community. Now
companies in Germany and France (UMS e.g.), Italy (SELEX
e.g.) and Great Britain (QinetiQ e.g.) are short before to
introduce their GaN technology or products
p to the market.
The most offer two different gate lenghts, 0,5µm for 1 and
around 6GHz [19, 20] and 0,25µm mainly for X band (8 to 12
GHz) and up to Ku band [21]. All processes are dedicated to
high RF power and offer devicces with high breakdown
voltages and high efficiency. Quitee all known processes offer
the use of coplanar or microstrip lin
nes [11], in the last case this
means that the backside processs module contain wafer
thinning and via hole etching. Espeecially the via hole etching
is a time consuming process step because
b of the high binding
energy of SiC [22].
The UMS processes GH50 (0,5µ µm gate length) and GH25
(0,25µm) are developed in paraallel to enable maximum
synergy between them in order to use u the same machines and
tools as much as possible [23].
 V. DEVICES AND MMICS cover applications in the frequency range from 4 up to 20 GHz
Following the certain technologies deeveloped for a
dedicated application and frequency domain, the devices also
show a broad field of interest by researcherrs and engineers.
For high power application Uniteed Monolithic
Semiconductors (UMS) developed a GaN HEMT process
named GH50, which offer 0.5µm gate lengthh power bars and
large transistors for up to 7GHz. For BTS aapplication UMS
teamed together with NXP to have a directt feedback and a
very experienced partner within this field. As an example first
results are shown in Fig. 3. This power bar cconsists of a total

Fig. 4: First demonstrator of GH25, a thrree-stage wideband HPA,

measurements done in pulsed mode.
[23]. A first MMIC GaN demon
nstrator showed promising
results, Fig. 4.

The onwafer measurements weree carried out at Vd of 25V

and a pulse condition of 25µs / 10%
%. The three stage HPA has
a gain of greater than 20dB over 6 to 18GHz with a output
power greater than 6W. The differeent colors show the results
of several MMICs measured.

Fig. 3: A UMS power bar with 36mm gate periphery, measured at 2GHz The development will move to o higher power and more
fficiency 52%.
and VDS=50V in cw. Gain is 17dB, Pout 128W and eff complex MMICs using GaN. Unfortunately,
U the today’s
gate periphery of 36mm and was mounted in a standard available packaging solutions are not
n designed to handle high
package. power density. This limits the GaN N development and is the
reason why the possible power density of more than 10W/mm
The GH50 process mentioned is dedicatedd for BTS, Radar is not used and quite all commerciaal available devices show a
in L band up to C band and SSPA for Satccom applications density of less than 3W/mm. This iss targeted by the EC funded
[23]. This process will be available end oof 2010 and use project AGAPAC [7], which aim ms to improve the thermal
100mm and 150mm GaN on SiC wafers tto ensure proper conductivity of base plate material from 300W/mK to more
thermal management of the device. This is im mportant since the than 500W/mK. The approach is to o use a diamond composite
power bar shown in Fig. 3 has an output pow wer of 128W at an material for the base plate. There arre first measurements done
efficiency of 52%. This means that 118W oof thermal power with the use of RAMAN equipmen nt [24, 8]. Fig. 5 shows one
has to be managed so that the junction temperrature stay below
the limit, which is foreseen to be at 175°C. Foor this a new base
plate approach has to be considered and is ddiscussed later in
this paper. Several transistor geometries havee been developed
to ensure suitable solutions for the applicaations mentioned
above.
The bigger the device the lower the powerr density will be.
This is due to the thermal management on the device, only
small devices could be able to handle densities higher than
5W/mm. Also the Drain-Source voltage has to be taken into
account, for certain applications a high voltage means
additional advantages, because the output im mpedance is very
close to that of the following antenna and thhus the matching
network could be designed smaller and more bbroadband.
Fig. 5: Line temperature profile between source and drain of a GaN
For higher frequencies UMS developed tthe 0.25µm gate HEMT, as recorded by IR and Raman measurement.
m Courtesy of
University of Bristol [25].
length process GH25. It offers full MMIC cappabilities and will
example of a Raman and an IR temperature measurement
done at the University of Bristol [25]. This kind of detailed
line temperature profile allows being more close to the real
peak temperature compared to IR. Together with new base
plate approaches the thermal management will be more
relaxed even at high power density devices.
VI. CONCLUSION
The today’s status of the European GaN technology was
described with emphasis on high power RF devices. As an
example two processes were introduced and some
demonstrator results shown. There are other remarkable
results within Europe available; the achievements will lead to
enable GaN into a lot of applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The autors would like to thank all the European GaN
community for their support and contribution to this work.
The authors would also like to acknowledge the financial and
technical support from: EDA, EC, ESA, BMBF, DLR, BWB,
DGA, CNES, WTD81, FMV, MDE, Difesa, dstl, Defensie,
ANR, MiUR, EPSRC.
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