The three generations of semiconductor materials we have pursued

Author：Yixing Pulitai Electronic Materials Co., Ltd   Date：2019-12-12   Sources：en.yxplt.cn   Clicks：102 

Since the 1960s, this era has been branded as the "Silicon age". Up to now, silicon still dominates this era. Although material scientists love to call the 21st century the era of new materials, it still belongs to its own high. However, in these decades, there have been many outstanding semiconductor material systems. In order to facilitate the description, we have divided the semiconductor materials into three generations according to the current (especially in China).

Generation: element semiconductor

The first application is germanium, silicon, selenium, boron, tellurium, antimony and other semiconductor materials made of a single element. At first, it wasn't silicon that people found. In the 1950s, germanium played a major role in the semiconductor industry. However, germanium has so many defects that it was quickly pulled down by silicon. With the development of 60 years, abundant resources, high-quality characteristics and increasingly perfect technology, silicon has become the most widely used semiconductor material in the electronic industry.

According to statistics, 95% of semiconductor devices and 99% of integrated circuits are made of silicon. Although the rising stars emerge one after another, silicon is the best semiconductor material with better comprehensive performance.

Second generation: compound semiconductor

Compound semiconductor is mainly composed of two or more elements, such as gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium phosphide (INP), indium antimonide (InSb), gallium nitride (GAN), silicon carbide (SIC), cadmium sulfide (CDS), etc. Gallium arsenide is the second most widely used semiconductor material after silicon. GaAs is a kind of direct band gap semiconductor material (silicon is an indirect band gap). The bottom of the conduction band and the top of the valence band are in the same position in K space. The electron transition only needs to absorb energy, so the energy can be almost all emitted in the form of light, which means that the luminous efficiency is very high. Moreover, GaAs has the advantages of wide band gap and high electron mobility, so it has advantages in optoelectronic devices and optoelectronic integration.

Third generation: wide band gap semiconductor

Semiconductors with a band gap width of about or equal to 3.2eV are called wide band gap semiconductors. This system includes silicon carbide (SIC), gallium nitride (GAN), aluminum nitride (AlN), zinc oxide (ZnO), diamond and other materials. Among them, SiC and Gan are more representative. The rise of wide band gap semiconductors is a new change in the field of some electronic devices. These electronic fields require semiconductor devices to be resistant to high temperature, high frequency, high power, irradiation and corrosion. Wide band gap semiconductors have this potential. In the wide band gap, SiC technology is the most mature and Gan is the most widely used.