SAMCO has announced MOCVD demonstration capability on a new gallium nitride (GaN-on-Si) system, the GaN-550, from Valence Process Equipment Inc (VPE) of Branchburg NJ, USA. SAMCO sells and distributes the GaN-550, which is equipped with a ø550 mm carrier for mass production of GaN power devices.  The demo system will be available for customer demonstrations at SAMCO’s R&D facility in early 2015.

SAMCO is expanding its wide range of dry etching and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) systems for wide-bandgap semiconductor applications such as LEDs, laser diodes and RF devices. One of SAMCO’s strengths is the process of nitride semiconductors, which play important role in green electronics.

VPE is a start-up company, providing MOCVD systems for GaN-based LEDs. VPE’s GaN-500 MOCVD system employs a unique reaction chamber design and is highly-efficient at reducing gas consumption by up to 40 percent compared with other MOCVD systems.

SAMCO installed a new GaN-550 MOCVD system, which was developed from GaN-500, and has low process gases consumption, high-speed gas switching, and superior temperature control.  The specially designed gas injector requires fewer reactor cleanings, which increases system availability and uptime.  The GaN-550 system can grow more than 5 µm/hour GaN at the uniformity of less than one percent. While the carrier size of GaN-500 is ø500 mm, the carrier size of GaN-550 is ø550 mm for higher throughput, up to ø2 inch×72, ø4 inch×20, ø6 inch×7 or ø8 inch×4 per batch.

SAMCO utilizes the GaN-550 demo system and accelarates the sales of VPE’s MOCVD systems for GaN-power device manufacturing. Now, SAMCO provides “One-Stop Solution” to provide turn-key solutions for the nitride semiconductors – MOCVD, PECVD, dry etch and dry cleaning processes for power device manufacturing.

SAMCO was founded by Osamu Tsuji in 1979 as the Semiconductor And Materials COmpany (SAMCO). From its modest beginnings in a garage in Kyoto, Japan, SAMCO has grown into a $50 million corporation with more than 150 high-level design and production research associates at its corporate headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, sales offices in China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, New York and Silicon Valley, California as well as samco-ucp ltd.in Europe.