April 1, 2007
Demo 3W/mm RF Power
Dear Customers and Development Partners,
I’m delighted to report that in recent months, several of our customers and partners including Professor Lester Eastman’s group at Cornell University have demonstrated and published (see publications in www.Group4Labs.com/technology) the first RF power measurements of GaN-on-Diamond transistors; the Cornell group also announced side-by-side comparison tests with GaN-on-SiC transistors. Though the results are yet to show the maximum performance capability of GaN-on-Diamond materials, they highlighted the new platform’s fundamental value proposition over existing semiconductor materials. We were pleased with the preliminary results.
Bound by NDA agreements, we can’t say much about what our corporate partners and customers have demonstrated, but we can share some detail about the Cornell results. The Cornell data to be published in IEEE Electron Device Letters, and presented at WOCSDICE 2007 in Venice, Italy (May 20-23, 2007) show that GaN FET-on-Diamond transistors produce nearly 3 W/mm CW in the X-band (10GHz) with a PAE of 47%. The transistors also exhibit a thermal slope (°C per W/mm) of nearly half the slope of comparable GaN-on-SiC devices; such a thermal improvement could boost a transistor’s power and efficiency by an order of magnitude if designed accordingly. The results are particularly gratifying when one considers that the diamond wafer was only 25-microns thick, and was poorly heat-sunk. The GaN-on-SiC wafer used for comparison was over 370-microns thick given it a fundamental heat-spreading advantage.
We feel confident in suggesting that the transistor results from our corporate and university partners represent the elimination of the last remaining “science” risk in GaN-on-Diamond technology. In the near future, we will announce additional device data from substantially improved wafers that we have been shipping in recent weeks. Please feel free to write us (technology@Group4Labs.com) should you have any ideas for collaboration.
Warm Regards,
Felix Ejeckam
CEO
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