SBIR Phase II: Scalable Bulk GaN Crystal Growth

该小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目旨在生长氮化镓（GaN）单晶，该单晶足够大，可以为光电器件生产商业上可行的非极性GaN衬底。晶体生长过程的可行性在第一阶段得到了证明。 第二阶段项目将重点关注晶体生长和后端处理方法的可重复性和可扩展性。预期单位价格的降低将加速超高亮度发光二极管（LED）制造商采用GaN衬底。该项目的更广泛/商业影响将是提供大面积非极性GaN衬底的潜力，用于先进的GaN基发光体，如激光二极管和超高亮度LED。 GaN基LED通过取代诸如灯泡和荧光灯等低效和/或有毒的传统光源，为固态照明呈现了令人兴奋的长期前景。 然而，LED必须具有足够低的成本并表现出高的发光输出功率，以证明更换现有传统灯的合理性。在非极性GaN衬底上制造的GaN基LED将在该项目中开发，有可能满足最苛刻的照明要求，而传统的极性GaN基LED最终不能。

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.