SBIR Phase II: Scalable Bulk GaN Crystal Growth

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目旨在生长氮化镓(GaN)单晶，这些单晶足够大，可以生产出商业上可行的用于光电子器件的非极性GaN衬底。第一阶段论证了晶体生长工艺的可行性。第二阶段项目将侧重于晶体生长和后端加工方法的重现性和可扩展性。预计由此产生的单位价格下降将加快超高亮度发光二极管(LED)制造商对GaN衬底的采用。该项目的更广泛/商业影响将是为激光二极管和超高亮度LED等先进的GaN基光发射器应用提供大面积非极性GaN衬底的潜力。GaN基LED通过取代低效和/或有毒的传统光源，如灯泡和荧光灯，展示了令人兴奋的长期固态照明前景。然而，LED必须足够低的成本和表现出高发光输出功率，以证明更换现有的传统灯具是合理的。本项目将开发的非极性GaN衬底上制造的GaN基LED有可能满足最苛刻的照明要求，而传统的极性GaN基LED最终无法满足。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to grow gallium nitride (GaN) single crystals that are large enough to yield commercially-viable non-polar GaN substrates for optoelectronic devices. The feasibility of the crystal growth processes was demonstrated in Phase I. This Phase II project will focus on the reproducibility and scalability of the crystal growth and back-end processing methods. It is anticipated that the resulting per-unit price reduction will accelerate the adoption of GaN substrates by ultra-high brightness light emitting diode (LED) manufacturers.The broader/commercial impacts of this project will be the potential to provide large-area non-polar GaN substrates for applications in advanced GaN-based light emitters such as laser diodes and ultra-high brightness LEDs. GaN-based LEDs present exciting long-term prospects for solid-state lighting, via the replacement of inefficient and/or toxic conventional light sources such as light bulbs and fluorescent lamps. However, the LEDs must be sufficiently low cost and demonstrate high luminous output power to justify the replacement of existing conventional lamps. GaN-based LEDs fabricated on non-polar GaN substrates that will be developed in this project has the potential to meet the most demanding lighting requirements, whereas conventional polar GaN-based LEDs ultimately cannot.