OREANDA-NEWS. April 12, 2012. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT, CEO: Satoshi Miura, Tokyo) are pleased to announce a success in developing a groundbreaking process for release of GaN-based thin-film devices from substrates, where an extremely thin layer of boron nitride (BN) is grown between a sapphire substrate and the GaN-based semiconductor and works as a release layer. This process is named MeTRe (Mechanical Transfer using a Release layer) method.

This technology facilitates the transfer of the resulting nitride structures (typically a few мm thick) to more flexible and affordable substrates. Accordingly, preparation of novel devices such as very thin LEDs, transparent solar cells sensitive only to UV light, and highly-functional hybrid CMOSs becomes possible. This development was achieved based on our well matured film growth technology for the nitride semiconductor thin films, which has been developed and accumulated in NTT Basic Research Laboratories (NTT Atsugi R&D Center).

 This achievement will be reported in “Nature” magazine on April, 12.