August 8, 2001 – Durham, NC – Cree Inc. has been issued US patent no. 6,265,289 entitled “Methods of Fabricating Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductor Layers by Lateral Growth from Sidewalls into Trenches, and Gallium Nitride Semiconductor Structures Fabricated Thereby.”

The patent, licensed exclusively to Cree by North Carolina State U., covers process technology known as pendeoepitaxy, or “pendeo” for short, which refers to a process for growing gallium nitride semiconductor layers with low defect densities.

Chuck Swoboda, Cree’s President and CEO stated, “The issuance of this patent extends Cree’s portfolio of technology critical in the development of GaN-based devices. Growing low defect layers of GaN is essential to the realization of long-lifetime GaN-based laser diodes and other devices”