The Gallium Nitride Market: New Perspectives for Nitride Materials and Devices

Business Wire, July 19, 2007

LYON, France -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report related to the worldwide electronics industry is now available to its catalogue.

GaN07 Substrates and Devices: New perspectives for nitride materials and devices

http://www.reportlinker.com/p053796/GaN07-substrates.html

With an annual volume of more than 5 millions units of 2" equivalent substrates, GaN-based green, blue and white LED is the main eater of nitride materials targeting a $3.5B market at devices level. Current split shows that SiC substrates is accounting for 10% of the total production, sapphire making the balancing.

Sapphire market for LED is now tending toward equilibrium with 2/3 LED manufactured on 2" and 1/3 on 3" substrates and a recent introduction of 4" production announced by Japanese Showa Denko. Sapphire material market has then just beaten the $150M barrier in 2006.

SiC is also entering in a 4" production stage at CREE but cannot be considered as a real open market.

The substrate market playground can be seen as partially unstable because of the rapid emergence of new substrates for GaN epitaxy. GaN-on-Silicon, GaN-on-ZnO, GaN-on-Germanium, GaN-on-Glass, GaN-on-AlN and composite substrates like GaN-on-diamond or Picogiga GaN-on-SopSiC are now pursuing the same Rubicon: propose the best compromise between GaN quality, large diameter, low bowing, high Tc, controlled TCE and of course, low cost. 6" is the main target and is now available of-the-shelf from selected companies. That is opening new doors to higher LED productivity toward the gigantic SSL general illumination business.

In the RF business, GaN HEMT is now ready to challenge Si LDMOS and GaAs pHEMT in the telecommunication base stations market (3G, 4G, WiMAX...). With devices reaching Psat=174W @ 6GHz under 48V polarisation, the GaN technology can be partially implemented among the 2 millions deployed mobile phone base stations and coming next WiMAX infrastructures. A 10,000 x 4" epiwafers market is forecasted in a very near future.

Gallium Nitride (GaN), as silicon carbide (SiC), is a wide bandgap material allowing reaching high breakdown voltage. Thus road to power electronics applications is wide open. However, GaN growth is based on an ethero epitaxy process with often an AlN nucleation layer forcing the devices to be designed laterally. Lateral devices are limited in term of breakdown voltage compared to vertical ones and become rapidly bulky for high power density ranges.

This situation deals with a subtle balance between substrate diameter, power density, chip size and device cost. In other terms, GaN power devices on sapphire, silicon or composite substrates can compete with SiC from a cost point of view using larger substrates (4") to compensate the bigger chip size at a given power density.

Table of content

Glossary

Executive summary

* Main targeted applications of GaN devices

* 2005-2012 GaN devices revenues in M$ for LED, Laser, RF & power electronics

* 2005-2012 GaN substrate revenues in M$ for LED, Laser, RF & power electronics

GaN crystal growth techniques

* MOCVD, MBE, HVPE

* Advantages & Drawbacks

* Comparison table and main vendors

GaN material current developments

* Direct growth or buffer approach

* Composite substrates: wafer bonding

* Example of current realizations:

Picogiga / Soitec

Aonex

BlueGlass

IMEC

AZZURO

Toshiba Ceramic

Nitronex

TDI

Hitachi Cable

Cermet

Group4Lab

SP3 Diamond

* GaN / Silicon epiwafer manufacturers

* GaN/Sapphire & GaN/SiC epiwafer manufacturers

* Bulk / free-standing GaN wafers specifications

* Examples of current GaN material pricing

* GaN substrates / applications matrix

* Tentative time-to-market for different substrates in different applications

Optoelectronic Markets

GaN HB-LED market

* 2001-2012 GaN LED market in M$

* HB-LED 2006 applications breakdown

* HB-LED 2006 market shares per company

* Main agreements and cross-licenses

* 2006 market breakdown by material

* Typical structure

* Emitting color in function of In concentration

* Trends in High Power LEDs

* Different White LED approaches

* White LED performance roadmap

* GaN HB-LEDs price analysis

* New technologies in development

* Material analysis

2005-2012 Estimated substrates volume (SiC & Sapphire)

2006 sapphire substrates: price, units and diameter analysis

2005-2012 Sapphire substrates market for LED in volume by diameter & related market

2005-2012 Sapphire substrates market for LED in value, split by diameter

Sapphire substrates main manufacturers

2005-2012SiC wafers diameter evolution

2005-2012 SiC substrates market for LED

Conclusions on HB-LED market

Blue Laser Diodes

* Introduction: Blue laser diodes status

* Targeted applications for GaN LD

* Blue laser diodes market in game stations

* GaN-based laser diodes state-of-the-art

* Known supply-chain in the blue LD business

* 2005-2012 annual volumes for GaN LD for various applications and related device revenues

* 2005-2012 annual volumes for 2" bulk GaN wafers for blue LD and related substrates revenues

* Future GaN laser applications: laser TV and projectorsConclusion on Blue Laser Diodes market