This year, CS Mantech (22 – 25 May) was held in Indian Wells, California, a place I had only heard of because Andy Murray played a tennis tournament here in the spring.

Andy and his cohorts weren’t here for the conference.  It was not really conducive to playing three sets of tennis in temperatures of 42 ⁰C.

The conference was well attended by the great and the good from the Compound Semi world, especially with two other similar events taking place during the same week, one in the Canaries and the other in Sweden.

Day one began with a workshop themed “The compound semiconductor Engineer’s tool box”. It was informative if not many tips on how to improve my back hand!

Tuesday focused on 5G and Power electronics covering the technical requirements and market drivers. The highlights were GaN on SiC as the main material set for the immediate future for both markets moving rapidly as possible from 150mm to 200mm, but with the warning on power not to count out the silicon boys who always seem to come with an answer to the problems posed.

Tuesday was the exhibitors evening and I am sure everyone was there to have a good discussion with the various suppliers present and not just because of the free food and beer on offer!

Wednesday and Thursday were technical and at times I wished I had a doubles partner to help cover the two parallel running sessions due to the quality of the papers on offer. As with the plenary session the majority of the papers covered the GaN on SiC material set, with the ALD of Al₂O₃ for the gate dielectric seeming to becoming main stream and challenges on etching of the recessed gate areas that I noted to follow up on.

Wednesday evening was the International Reception which was held at the local air museum in Palm Springs which if you an old plane geek like myself wasn’t to be missed, an enjoyable evening with lively debate around the room.

All in all a good conference even if I didn’t improve my tennis game!

Author: Robert Gunn, Strategic Marketing Manager