Kyma Technologies, Inc., a leading supplier of ultra-high purity crystalline gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminum nitride (AlN) materials and related products and services, today announced that it is expanding its capacity for supplying GaN templates

Kyma’s GaN templates consist of an epitaxial layer of GaN deposited on a foreign substrate such as sapphire, silicon, or silicon carbide. Kyma also inserts a very thin AlN layer in between the GaN and the foreign substrate, which serves as an excellent nucleation layer.

Kyma’s customers purchase the GaN templates because they are epi-ready and have a low defect density. This means that the customer-deposited epitaxial device active layers have a higher structural quality than if they used only the bare foreign substrate. For many devices, improved structural quality can translate to better performance and reliability.

An important additional benefit of Kyma’s GaN templates is improved thermal conductivity of the GaN just below the epitaxial device layers. Research carried out by Professor John Muth of North Carolina State University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering on Kyma’s GaN materials has shown a clear dependence of thermal conductivity on defect density¹. This means that heat generated in the device active layer can more readily be dissipated than when a bare foreign substrate is used.

“Our current GaN template capacity expansion effort is based primarily on improved yield and equipment utilization efficiency. In order to accelerate our capacity ramp, we are also in the process of accessing significantly higher capacity GaN and AlN template manufacturing tools which will reduce prices and increase volume even further,”commented Mr. Kevin Udwary, Kyma’s Senior Production Engineer who has been leading the expansion effort.

The efficiencies gained in this capacity ramp effort by Kyma also translate to a lower cost of manufacturing, which means lowers prices for the customer.

Ms. Tamara Stephenson, Kyma's Technical Sales Engineer, offered, “Our customers are beginning to benefit from lower prices resulting from our manufacturing efficiency gains. I am pleased to note that we expect this trend to continue as we execute on our plan for better GaN templates made faster and at lower cost.”

Kyma is also offering very attractive prices on its existing inventory of GaN templates which are the result of a multitude of R&D and calibration activities within Kyma's operations. This includes $85 research and rider grade templates that are in stock from 1um to 150um thick GaN on 2" diameter sapphire.

About Kyma Technologies

Kyma is a leading supplier of crystalline gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminum nitride (AlN) materials for a broad range of high performance nitride semiconductor device applications.

The market for nitride semiconductor devices is expected to surpass $9B by 2010. The combined addressable market for GaN and AlN substrates is expected to surpass $500M by 2010.

For more information about Kyma Technologies, visit www.kymatech.com, e-mail info@kymatech.com, or call the company directly at 919.789.8880.

Kyma is a registered trademark of Kyma Technologies, Inc.

---

1. C. Mion, J. F. Muth, E. A. Preble, and D. Hanser, "Accurate dependence of gallium nitride thermal conductivity on dislocation density," Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 092123 (2006).