Electrochemical Solution Growth of Bulk GaN for Power Electronics Substrates, Final Report
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States). Nanoscale Sciences
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States). Energy Storage Technology and Systems
This project focused on developing a novel, scalable, and economic growth technique for bulk gallium nitride (GaN), a critical material for next-generation high-temperature power electronics. Large area, high-quality bulk GaN is required as a substrate material in order to grow highly efficient bipolar transistors for inverters and power conditioning. Attempting to grow GaN in bulk by traditional precipitation methods forces extreme thermodynamic and kinetic conditions, putting these techniques at the extremes of experimental science, which is unsuitable for large-area, cost-effective substrate growth. The Electrochemical Solution Growth (ESG) technique is a novel concept that addresses these issues in a unique way, and was developed at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), in part under this program. The crucial step in demonstrating the technique’s feasibility was to deposit high-quality GaN on a seed crystal. The bulk of SNL’s activities were focused on developing conditions for deposition of GaN on a seed crystal (a thin film of GaN grown by metal organic chemical vapor phase deposition (MOCVD) on c-axis oriented sapphire) in a molten salt electrolyte solution using a rotating disk reactor (RDR) ESG apparatus. This project was actively funded from FY08 to FY12 by the Energy Storage Program and GaN Initiative for Grid Applications (GIGA) program of the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Some activities focused on silicon doping of GaN occurred in FY13 but only through the use of carryover funds.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Electricity (OE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 1504839
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-2015-5050; 594342
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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