Full lineup of compound semiconductor equipment within reach – TES extends SiC-validated reactor platform to GaN at Semicon Korea

As wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors expand across high-voltage power and high-frequency RF applications, epitaxy platforms are increasingly differentiated by reactor-level thermal stability, process repeatability, and operational risk containment.

TES structured its development strategy sequentially: establishing structural and uniformity stability in SiC before applying the same architecture to GaN, particularly for Aluminum Nitride (AlN) buffer growth on SiC substrates. The company states that its GaN Epi system has completed technical validation and is undergoing customer qualification.

TES introduced its SiC Power Semiconductor Epi System at ICSCRM last year, using it as the validation foundation for its reactor design.

According to internal evaluation data, the system demonstrated thickness uniformity below 1% on 8-inch wafers (0.69% average), stable operation across 34 consecutive runs without recipe modification, and immediate reproducibility following Preventive Maintenance (PM).

The platform integrates TES’s proprietary Tunable Triple Pair Nozzle (TTPN) gas control structure, employing a horizontal precursor delivery configuration to reduce premature gas interaction prior to wafer contact.

This validated configuration serves as the structural basis for TES’s GaN expansion.

High-temperature stability is central to WBG epitaxy.

TES utilizes a hot-wall reactor configuration designed to maintain stable thermal distribution under elevated growth conditions. Internal measurements indicate a temperature deviation (Max–Min) of 4°C at 1650°C, corresponding to a Total Usable Area(TUA) exceeding 95% on 8-inch wafers.

Such thermal stability supports consistent crystalline formation and dopant uniformity in both SiC and GaN growth processes.

TES adopts a single-wafer processing configuration optimized for advanced WBG device structures requiring sequential epitaxial growth. Architectures such as Super Junction (SJ) MOSFETs involve multiple thin epitaxial layers formed under repeated high-temperature cycles, where thermal equilibrium stability and layer-to-layer consistency are critical.

The single-wafer approach is positioned to enhance process controllability during iterative growth sequences and to localize potential process excursions at the wafer level. In high-value WBG manufacturing environments, such structural process isolation can contribute to controlled operational risk management.

Following validation in SiC, TES applied the same reactor and gas control framework to GaN epitaxy.

High-frequency GaN HEMT devices (>26 GHz), used in RF communications, radar systems, and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite platforms, require uniform AlN buffer layers to mitigate lattice mismatch between GaN and SiC substrates.

TES reports completion of technical validation for its AlN buffer growth process under the same hot-wall and TTPN architecture.

“Our 15 years of development in compound semiconductor growth equipment has established a validated foundation, beginning with SiC and now extending into GaN,” a TES official stated.

Beyond SiC and GaN, TES continues development in SiC-based TRION CVD systems for SJ applications, single-wafer MOCVD systems for MicroLED, and Gallium Oxide (Ga₂O₃) power semiconductor materials.

Rather than pursuing isolated material-specific tools, TES maintains a shared reactor framework across multiple WBG systems.

As WBG device architectures grow more complex, reactor-level thermal stability and controlled process risk are increasingly considered key evaluation metrics in next-generation epitaxy platforms.

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Source: https://hites.co.kr/eng/