ARPA-E has announced up to $6.5 million in funding for a new program that seeks to greatly improve the performance and reliability of power electronics semiconductor devices by overcoming the limitations of current fabrication methods. 

ARPA-E’s Power Nitride Doping Innovation Offers Devices Enabling SWITCHES (PNDIODES) program seeks to address a major challenge experienced by ARPA-E SWITCHES project teams in the production of vertical gallium nitride (GaN) power electronic devices, specifically those based on bulk GaN substrates. The issue has been the lack of an effective process to selectively dope regions of GaN with sufficient quality to support vertical power electronic devices. Doping refers to the process of selectively inserting impurities into a specific region of a semiconductor to achieve specific electrical characteristics and is a key enabling process for all semiconductor technology. 

Improving GaN selective area doping methods could pave the way for high-performance, next-generation power switching devices for a wide range of applications, such as consumer electronics, power supplies, solar inverters, wind power, automotive applications, motor drives, ship propulsion, rail, and the grid. 

ARPA-E encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams for the PNDIODES program. ARPA-E believes that appropriate interdisciplinary and cross-organizational collaborations can best facilitate scientific and technological discoveries in this area.  

The deadline to submit a Full Application for PNDIODES is 5 p.m. ET on January 4, 2017. Additional information, including the full FOA and how to find project teaming partners, is available on ARPA-E’s online application portal, ARPA-E eXCHANGE.