Unveiling Gallium’s Dark Side: Economic and Geopolitical Challenges in Semiconductor Production
Gallium’s dark side emerges as an intriguing aspect of its rising prominence in semiconductor technology. While gallium oxide offers promising benefits such as low energy consumption and suitability for high-tech applications, its production comes with significant challenges.
The high cost of iridium needed for manufacturing crucibles, coupled with geopolitical tensions and export restrictions, adds a layer of complexity to the seemingly bright future of gallium oxide. This darker facet reveals how the pursuit of advanced materials involves navigating both economic and strategic hurdles, shaping the competitive landscape of the trillion-dollar industry.
In 1959, the American inventors of the integrated circuit chose silicon as their substrate and gave birth to a new industry. Now other materials, with virtues suited to new applications, are beginning to replace it. Graphene, for example, is a potentially exciting substrate, but it lies years further out on the R&D schedule.
As with silicon, whoever mass produces the new substrate will probably dominate the trillion-dollar industry it spawns.
Gallium oxide is much closer to mass production, and China refines 80% of global gallium and exported 94 metric tons of it last year, up 25% YoY. But only a few companies – one European and the others in Japan and China – can make it at the required purity.
Thanks to their low energy consumption, gallium oxide semiconductors are ideal for communications, aerospace, radar, and maglev. Among ultra-wide band gap materials like diamond, boron nitride and silicon carbide, only gallium oxide forms single crystals at atmospheric pressure after solidification from a melt
While drastically reducing fabrication costs, this requires large amounts of iridium to make crucibles for the melt. But iridium is three times more expensive than gold, and a 4 inch crucible requires 11 lb. (5 kg.) of the stuff. Also, for China, this raises IP concerns since Japan and the US pioneered the method.
Battle of the substrate stars
August 2022 — US government imposes export controls on two substrates of ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors – gallium oxide (Ga2O3), and diamonds – as well as EDA software “designed for the development of integrated circuits with Gate-All-Around Field-Effect Transistor (GAAFET).
July 2023 — China: ‘Gallium and germanium require an export license’.
August 2023 — China: ‘Gallium nitride (GaN) and germanium dioxide (GeO2) exporters must apply for licenses, identify importers and end-users’.
September 2023 — “Chinese researchers cut iridium use 80%, make four-inch gallium dioxide wafers, slash production costs, smooth the path to mass fabrication”. Interesting Engineering.
Why is China releasing a blizzard of new technologies?
- It’s committed to development through technology,
- It outspends the USA by 400% on R&D,
- It has 300,000 researchers with an IQ of 160+ vs. 30,000 in the rest of the world.
China is doing for ICs what it did for railways and renewable energy.
It’s doing the same for EVs and will do for medical care: make them affordable by the 90%. And make a fortune doing so.
