Japan develops new technology for gallium oxide preparation

According to the latest report, the country’s Tohoku University Professor Yoshikawa Akira has cooperated with start-ups to develop a new generation of semiconductor material a new manufacturing technology of gallium oxide, at a cost of about one percent of the traditional method.

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The traditional method is to heat a vessel made of the precious metal iridium to melt the material inside and create a crystal. To manufacture a practical crystal with a diameter of about 15 cm, the container alone needs 30 million to 50 million yen (about 2.53 million yuan), and the quality of the crystal is not stable enough.

It is said that gallium oxide crystals can be produced by the new method at about 1/100 of the current cost due to the need for no expensive containers and other reasons. The team stated that it will strive to produce crystals with a diameter of more than 6 inches within 2 years to promote industrialization.

Moreover, gallium oxide is expected to be a new generation of power semiconductor materials. It is said that the power loss of gallium oxide is theoretically only about 1/3400 of silicon and about 1/10 of silicon carbide.

If pure electric vehicles (EVs) use power semiconductors made of gallium oxide for the motor drive power supply, they can travel longer distances even with the same battery capacity. Teams at C&A and Northeastern University will use new methods to reduce production costs that have previously been a bottleneck and drive practicality.

TrendForce estimates that due to the slowdown of the epidemic, the demand for 5G base station RF front-end, mobile phone chargers, and vehicle energy transmission will gradually increase. It is expected that this year’s GaN communication and power components revenue will reach 680 million and 61 million US dollars, respectively.

(via)