The development of GaN HEMT technology on a Si substrate is one of the main objectives of the semiconductor industry to reduce manufacturing costs as well as to address the monolithic integration of GaN components with Si-based components.
GaN on SiC, which is predominantly used in 4G/5G base transceiver stations, remains one of the most expensive RF semiconductor technologies because of its non-mainstream semiconductor processing.
This can limit its potential for large economy of scale.
In contrast, GaN-on-Si combines competitive performance with a high-volume capability providing that its production is ported from III-V compound semiconductor foundries to mainstream CMOS
manufacturing lines.
Over the last few years, ST has put a considerable effort into the development of GaN-on-Si technologies strictly adherent to the workflows of standard CMOS-based process nodes. This enables the manufacturing of a new generation of RF power products for communications, radar, and wireless infrastructure markets, within a consolidated supply chain and without major volume limitations.
mms-conf.org 