manufacturing-today.com/news/manufacturers-brace-for-chinas-mineral-export-limits/" target="_blank">limited the export of gallium nitride, a type of semiconductor used to manufacture a variety of consumer power electronics, such as cell phones and computers, as well as medical devices, cars, wind turbines, solar farms, LED lightbulbs and more.
China produces nearly 98% of the world's supply of semiconductor gallium, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In response to the country's move to limit exports on the compound, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) put out a call for proposals to U.S. scientists to engineer a solution to replace gallium nitride-based semiconductors and awarded four teams $1 million for a one-year research sprint.
Patrick Lenahan, distinguished professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State, will investigate the possibility of replacing gallium nitride-based devices with boron nitride. Co-principal investigators from the Ohio State University, the University of Iowa and QuantCAD - a quantum technology start-up with locations in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago - will join Lenahan in the investigation.
"We believe boron is a potentially good alternative to gallium in some technologically critical gallium nitride-based applications, but we don't know exactly how this may work out," Lenahan said. "Our team, which involves theorists and experimentalists, will work to determine how boron nitride works, physically, in systems of real interest, and what could be the potential drawbacks in using it in place of gallium nitride."
Consisting of 50% gallium and 50% nitrogen, gallium nitride has the advantage of being a wide bandgap semiconductor, Lenahan said, meaning it can withstand higher electric fields and sustain higher voltages and temperatures than lower bandgap semiconductors, like silicon. Boron nitride has comparable, but far less understood, physical characteristics to gallium nitride, and may have the potential to perform similarly in some critical applications.
