Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? | Hacker News Reader

Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon?

wired.co.uk

27 pointsJerry220 comments

All of three paragraphs long. Quotes a CEO talking his book.

If GaN were going to replace Si (it isn't), this isn't how you'd find out.

   > If GaN were going to replace Si (it isn't), this 
   > isn't how you'd find out.

I think the generalized form of this statement is under appreciated. In my experience it is common for company leaders to always position their company's products as the "next big thing" and it is never this sort of announcement that makes it the "next big thing" or even foretells the next big thing. So often the actual next big thing sort of "explodes" into your consciousness as "everything" is using/employing/copying it. And following back the bread crumbs to the first mentions, rarely include a lot of pre-press on how good its going to be.

That said, GaN power transistors are a thing. They were used in the winning inverter contest Google ran[1], I've played with some samples from Mouser [2] and they really are amazing. I thought IGBT transistors would replace power MOSFETs but now I'm pretty sure it will be these bad boys.

[1] http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2016/02/and-winner-of-1-m...

[2] http://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/FlyerSMDChopperBoardPGA26E19BA...

> And following back the bread crumbs to the first mentions, rarely include a lot of pre-press on how good its going to be.

You'd find it of course, but you'll also find it for everything else that failed. Its predictive power is near to zero.

Also, Betteridge's Law applies here, as always.

With this article, you'd think they'd just discovered GaN.

It's been around for some time, about as long as there've been cheap blue and violet LED's and lasers (your Blu-ray player uses GaN).

Si may be an inferior semiconductor from certain performance perspectives, but it will just about always be cheaper.

Gallium is pretty rare as elements go, and many other industries (including solar) consume a fair amount of it. You'll run out before you get it past niche applications.

GaN has even existed in IC form for quite awhile now. Its pretty much limited to high end radio/sat parts though due to its cost.

If you are interested, read up on SiC, Silicon Carbide. It is better then Gallium Nitride and Silicon for high voltage power small electronics because it has higher thermal conductivity. I randomly learned about it when I was fixing my cars breaks, apparently that is the material that is used :)

It can also be quite pretty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite

Difficult to machine, though, I'd expect, being among the hardest of all known substances (the moissanite polymorph being just a bit softer than diamond, at a Mohs scale hardness of 9.5.)

> I randomly learned about it when I was fixing my cars breaks, apparently that is the material that is used :)

What is it used for?

I'm familiar with SiC in the form of grit (grinding agent, looks like fine-grained sand) when I'm making telescope optics. It's extremely hard, and it grinds glass better than anything except diamond.

The disk break...I guess because it has high thermal resistance. You make telescope optics? For fun or work? or both?

Just a hobby at the moment. Working on a 300 mm mirror right now.

That awesome dude. I got into amateur astronomy about two years ago when I first moved to the bay area from new york. I just purchased a celestron nextstar 4SE can't wait to test it out.

GaN is grown on SiC; best of both.

ahh I didn't know that.

The list of application domains looks like a laundry list from an elevator pitch.

I'd be more interested in having an introduction of how it is used today, measurable aspects of how it compares to Silicon in application and manufacturing.

Before identifying futuristic technology, identify the pain points shared by aspects of futuristic technology then show how GaN can solve that. Provide a directed plan, not a dream.

Military radars and other high power electronics

If Gallium nitride would really replace silicon for computer chips and the chips are really better, this would be an evolutionary step in the chip production, but not a disruption. A disruptive innovation (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Disruptive_innova...) is characterized to create "a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leaders and alliances.". This clearly isn't the case here.

TLDR: Dear tech journalists, stop putting bullshit words into headlines and articles if you don't know their meanings.

I think if you consider the many tens or even hundreds of $B currently invested in Si foundry tooling which could be obsoleted by this transition the word 'disruptive' is appropriate.

However, the semiconductor industry seems uniquely well suited to handle this as they seem to coordinate their already highly disruptive process steps across much of the industry. E.g. https://www.bing.com/search?q=Intel%20Samsung%20TSMC%20reach...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

maybe it will disrupt maybe it won't, but will it make the world a better place?

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