Date Visited:8 June 1998
TTEC Attendees:
V. Dmitriev (report author)
R. C. Clarke
H. Morishita
M. S. Shur
U. Varshney
Hosts:
Masaru Kazumura, Director, ERL
Daisuke Ueda, Ph.D., General Manager
Yorito Ota, Ph.D., Manager
Kaoru Inoue, Manager
Takeshi Fukuda
Katsunori Nishii, Senior Staff Engineer
Hiroyuki Masato, Engineer
Toshinobu Matsuno, Staff Engineer
INTRODUCTION
Matsushita Electronics Corporation (MEC), a part of the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic), was founded in 1952. Currently, MEC has 14,500 employees. Company sales are ¥482 billion (approx. $3.4 billion). The company is strictly limited to consumer electronics ("High volume at zero cost").
The Electronic Research Laboratory performs R&D on compound semiconductors, mainly GaAs. The laboratory has 4 divisions: GaAs IC, GaAs MMIC, GaAs Process, and New materials (SiGe, SiC, GaN). The work on SiC and GaN is focused on the development of high frequency, high power electronics for communication base systems.
General Discussion
A roadmap for high power, high frequency devices was presented. For the year 2010, high frequency, high power SiC and GaN devices are considered as products. For device production, 3-inch SiC substrates are viewed as sufficient. A possible device application for SiC will be more than 100 W at L-band devices for communications (base stations). SiC is considered a better substrate for nitrides (lasers and FETs) due to better nitride epitaxial quality.
MEC does not have its own bulk growth capability and is not working on bulk growth of SiC. The laboratory does not have SiC epitaxy (SiC epitaxial structures were bought from Cree). The laboratory works on MOCVD of GaN and is planning to start MBE growth of GaN. Flip-chip technology is not considered as being good for high frequency GaN FETs.
The SiC market is estimated to be about 10% of the high temperature electronics market. SiC has no competitor for future high power electronics. GaN devices will work at lower power levels than SiC, but at higher frequencies.
SiC and GaN are internal MEC projects; the laboratory does not have government funds.
In general, wide band gap semiconductor research will continue to grow in Japan. Currently, wide bandgap semiconductor research is only several percents of the compound semiconductor R&D.
After discussion, a report on ohmic contacts to 6H-SiC was presented. The main idea was to perform laser annealing to improve ohmic contacts to n-type 6H-SiC (Nd-Na ~4.2E18 cm-3). For Pt, Au, Ti, and Ni contacts, MEC obtained contact resistivities of 1e-4 ohm cm-2, 2e-3 ohm cm-2, 4e-5 ohm cm-2, and 8e-4 ohm cm-2 , respectively.
REFERENCES
Hashimoto, T., et al. 1996. Inheritance of zinc-blende structure from 3C-SiC/Si(001) substrate in growth of GaN by MOCVD. J. Crystal Growth. 169:185.
Ishida, M., et al. 1997. Growth of GaN thin films on sapphire substrate by low pressure MOCVD. Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. 468:69.
Ishida, M., et al. 1997. Bowing parameter of unstrained InGaN grown by low pressure MOCVD. Technical Report of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers. ED97-127, CPM97-114 (1997-10):57.