The United States brings EDA, gallium oxide and diamond into its export control

According to Reuters, the United States on Friday imposed new export controls on technologies supporting the production of advanced semiconductor and gas turbine engines, which the United States said were vital to its national security.

According to the US Department of Commerce, the "emerging and basic technologies" covered by the move include gallium oxide and diamond because "equipment using these materials has significantly increased military potential".

Alan Estevez, Deputy Minister of industry and security of the Ministry of Commerce, said: "technological advances that allow technologies such as semiconductors and engines to operate faster, more efficiently, longer and under worse conditions may change the rules of the game in the commercial and military fields." "When we recognize the risks and benefits and act with our international partners, we can ensure that our common security goals are achieved."

These four technologies are one of the projects controlled by consensus reached by 42 participating countries at the meeting in December 2021. U.S. export controls cover a wider range of technologies than international agreements, including additional equipment, software and technology used to produce semiconductors.

Gallium oxide and diamond enable semiconductors "to work under more severe conditions, such as at higher voltages or temperatures. Devices using these materials have significantly increased military potential," Commerce said.

The Department said that these controls include ECAD, a software tool used to verify integrated circuits or printed circuit boards, "which can promote many commercial and military applications, including defense and communications satellites".

According to the US Department of Commerce, chips made of two ultra wide band gap semiconductors, gallium oxide and diamond, can work under worse conditions, such as higher voltage or temperature. The equipment using them "significantly increases the military potential"

As for the electronic computer-aided design software called ECAD, it is used to develop integrated circuits with full gate field effect transistors or gaafets. The military and aerospace defense industries use ECAD software to design complex integrated circuits. Gaafet is the key to the design of technologies that can realize "faster, more energy-saving and more radiation resistant integrated circuits", which have military applications, including defense satellites

In addition, pressurized combustion (PGC) technology, which can be used in rockets and hypersonic systems, is also under control.

Key advantages and breakthroughs of gallium oxide

Engineers and materials scientists at Cornell University have added a state-of-the-art tool to their laboratory equipment suite to help study gallium oxide, which is often considered as the successor of silicon carbide and gallium nitride and is the preferred semiconductor for many power electronics applications.

The Duffield hall Laboratory of Hari Nair, assistant research professor of materials science and engineering, began to operate the agnitron agilis 100 metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system on June 30. It has been specially calibrated to create gallium oxide thin films, a highly prized semiconductor material for its ability to handle high voltage, power density and frequency. These characteristics make it an ideal material for applications such as electric vehicles, renewable energy and 5g communications.

"Another key advantage of gallium oxide is the ability to grow single crystals of this material from molten form, which will be the key to expanding the substrate size," Nair said This amplification capability is very important for electronic equipment manufactured with new semiconductor materials in industry. "

The gallium oxide MOCVD system operates by spraying a metal organic gallium precursor on a heated single crystal semiconductor substrate. Heating will cause the precursor to decompose, releasing gallium atoms, and then the gallium atoms combine with the oxygen atoms on the surface of the silicon wafer to form a high-quality gallium oxide crystal layer.

MOCVD is an industry standard for the production of compound semiconductor epitaxial films, such as group III arsenide, group III phosphide and group III nitride, which play an important role in optical and mobile communications and solid-state lighting applications. In the past five years, the quality of gallium oxide grown by MOCVD has been steadily improved.

"With this system, we can grow thin films on substrates up to 2 inches in diameter under a wide range of adjustable oxidation chemical potentials," Nair said "It also has a very high substrate temperature capability. We can heat the substrate to 1500 degrees Celsius. The higher the substrate temperature, the better the film quality, which is the key to improving the performance of electronic devices."

Nair plans to work with the epitaxial solutions of AFRL Cornell Center and researchers in other parts of the campus to optimize the MOCVD of gallium oxide, which will make the materials more economically attractive to seek manufacturers with high precision and mass production.

"There is a need to make power electronics more compact and efficient," Nair said "One of the dreams is to reduce a substation the size of a small house to the size of a suitcase. This innovation will be the key to creating a smart grid, and power electronics based on gallium oxide semiconductor is a springboard to achieve this goal."

"The wide band gap provided by gallium oxide is very good, but if it cannot be grown on a large area substrate, it will be a difficult problem from a practical point of view," Nair said. "Gallium oxide has great development prospects, but we haven't reached that stage yet."