AIXTRON AG (FSE: AIXA, ISIN
DE000A0WMPJ6; NASDAQ: AIXG, ISIN US0096061041) today announced that its
next generation MOCVD Platform AIX G5 HT has demonstrated high quality GaN deposition
at very high growth rates and high pressure above 600mbar and superior GaN/InGaN
uniformities. The epitaxial runs were performed at Epistar Corporation, located
in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Taiwan consecutively without reactor
baking or swapping of any parts. The MOCVD reactor is now being transferred
into mass production.
The Next Generation Platform AIX G5 HT provides the largest wafer capacity
(56x2" / 14x4" / 8x6") and comes with revolutionary new reactor
design features that allow high growth rates and consecutive runs without baking
or swapping of parts. In total, this results in a more than doubled high quality
throughput compared to the previous generation.
The new reactor design provides highest process flexibility combined with superior
process stability. AIX G5 HT systems provide fastest time to production with
highest reproducibility from tool-to-tool, which enables a faster production
ramp up as compared to any other reactor, with easy copy-and-paste process transfer,
a key factor in a rapidly booming market with limited numbers of available process
experts.
Dr. Ming-Jiunn Jou, President of Epistar, comments: "AIXTRON was committed
to the challenging targets for the new reactor when we started our cooperation.
Now we are amazed how quickly AIXTRON has met its commitments. Furthermore,
the uniformities seen so far have given us confidence to significantly improve
our production yield on this new MOCVD reactor. We are now very keen to bring
this new tool into production and to benefit from its improvements."
Gerd Strauch, Vice President Corporate Product Design & Engineering, and
responsible for Planetary Reactor Development at AIXTRON AG comments: "I
am very pleased to see this fast progress at Epistar, as it is in accordance
with our expectations. It confirms the excellent target-oriented design of our
new reactor chamber, and it is a proof of our advanced CFD modelling and system
qualification at our own laboratory. We have successfully transferred the epitaxial
growth performance from our laboratory 1:1 to the system at Epistar's
site."