Substrate finance

Raleigh, NC-based

, a company developing and producing single crystalline aluminium nitride (AIN) substrates for high performance electronic and optoelectronic semiconductor devices, closed an $8.9 million financing at the end of November.

The round, which will be used to advance product development, expand marketing efforts and build the company's executive team, is the company's first outside financing.

HexaTech has developed a proprietary growth process for the fabrication of single crystalline AIN substrates, the use of which will enable the fabrication of next-generation electronic and optoelectronic devices with superior performance and device lifetimes.

The company was founded in 2001 based on technology developed in the Department of Materials Science at North Carolina State University. The technology was developed over the last eight years by the company co-founders Dr. Zlatko Sitar and Dr. Raoul Schlesser.

"Native substrates are critical for future development of III-nitride technology, said Zlatko Sitar, President and CTO of HexaTech. "We are very excited about this opportunity as it will enable us to accelerate scaling of our AlN wafers to commercially viable sizes, significantly increase our wafer production capacity and enable us to develop new devices and strategic partnerships."

AIN is an attractive substrate for III-nitride devices due to its close lattice and thermal match, high thermal conductivity and wide bandgap. These properties make it possible to operate the devices at very high current levels, high voltages, high temperatures and high frequencies.

HexaTech wafers have applications across a variety of semiconductor devices based on AIGaN alloys. HexaTech says that its proprietary growth process will result in AIN substrates with very low dislocation densities and high overall quality.