Compound Semiconductor Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing has cooled since its 2020 peak. 15 families published that year against 9 in 2017 and just 2 at the 2022 midpoint — this is a matured, not a growing, filing field.
- Influence sits with a handful of 1990s-era nitride patents. the most-cited record in the set carries 747 citations, and the next four most-cited all predate 2005 — current filers are building on decades-old foundational claims.
- Co-filing is thin and concentrated in Japan. only 10 co-assignee pairs exist across 376 families, and the strongest pairing appears just 5 times, pointing to largely independent, in-house filing rather than joint development.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 376 patent families filed against compound semiconductor materials — III-V devices, lattice-matched heterostructures and quantum well structures — captured under IPC classes centred on H01L29/20, H01L29/205 and C30B29. Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, with the most recent year necessarily incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
The technology composition skews heavily toward core semiconductor device claims and crystal growth, with laser and stimulated-emission structures forming a substantial secondary cluster. Filing activity is concentrated in the United States, with Europe and Japan as the next largest receiving offices, and Germany, WIPO and the United Kingdom trailing well behind.
Filing trend and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC subclass distribution for the 376 families in this landscape, drawn directly from the underlying corpus.
A field past its filing peak
Filings rose from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 15 in 2020, then fell sharply — by the 2022 midpoint only 2 families were filed that year. That trajectory reads as a mature, well-claimed space rather than an expanding one; new entrants are filing into dense prior art rather than open ground.
Device claims and crystal growth dominate
H01L semiconductor device claims appear in 315 of the 376 families and C30B crystal growth in 188, confirming that the bulk of activity sits in device architecture and substrate/material growth rather than in peripheral processing steps. H01S laser and stimulated-emission claims (105) form a distinct secondary cluster, while B82Y nanotechnology and H10B memory manufacture appear in only a small fraction of records, suggesting these adjacent areas remain comparatively open.
Shares are the percentage of the 376 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Compound Semiconductor Advanced Materials with Eureka
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Try EurekaThe most-cited foundational art
US10651305B2 — Compound semiconductor device with quantum well structure, power supply device, and high-frequency amplifier
A compound semiconductor device includes a substrate, a compound semiconductor layer formed over the substrate, a channel layer formed over the compound semiconductor layer, an electron supply layer formed over the channel layer, and a source electrode, a drain electrode, and a gate electrode formed apart from each other over the electron supply layer. A quantum well structure is formed by the compound semiconductor layer, the channel layer, and the electron supply layer.Filed by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, published 2020-05-12.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6046464A | Integrated heterostructures of group III-V nitride semiconductor materials including epitaxial ohmic contact … | 747 |
| 2 | US5679965A | Integrated heterostructures of Group III-V nitride semiconductor materials including epitaxial ohmic contact,… | 603 |
| 3 | US5670798A | Integrated heterostructures of Group III-V nitride semiconductor materials including epitaxial ohmic contact … | 582 |
| 4 | US6348096B1 | Method for manufacturing group III-V compound semiconductors | 221 |
| 5 | US6693352B1 | Contact structure for group III-V semiconductor devices and method of producing the same | 154 |
| 6 | US6566595B2 | Solar cell and process of manufacturing the same | 118 |
| 7 | US20020066403A1 | Method for manufacturing group III-V compound semiconductors | 112 |
| 8 | US6207976B1 | Semiconductor device with ohmic contacts on compound semiconductor and manufacture thereof | 97 |
| 9 | US7128846B2 | Process for producing group III nitride compound semiconductor | 88 |
| 10 | US20030006409A1 | Nitride compound semiconductor element | 87 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and favour older filings; they are not a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once filing trend, citation concentration and co-assignment are read together.
The filing peak has already passed
Filings climbed from 9 in 2017 to 15 in 2020 and then dropped to 2 by 2022. A new filer entering today is not claiming into a growth market; they are working around a decade of accumulated art in a space that has already been substantially staked out.
Influence traces back to 1990s nitride patents
The most-cited record in this set carries 747 citations and the next four most-cited all deal with Group III-V nitride heterostructures with epitaxial ohmic contacts. Modern quantum well and lattice-matched claims are still built on this foundational block, making freedom-to-operate review of these older families a first step for any new design.
Filing is largely solo, not joint
Only 10 co-assignee pairings appear across the whole dataset, and the strongest of them recurs just 5 times. Compared with fields built on cross-licensing consortia, this corpus reads as one where most organisations file independently, with occasional university or intra-group collaboration rather than broad industry alliances.
Crystal growth is a co-equal claim surface to device architecture
Roughly half of all families in this set carry crystal growth claims alongside device claims, meaning substrate and lattice-matching technique is as contested as the device structure itself. A design that changes only the device layer without addressing the growth method may still infringe on the growth-side claims.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to compound semiconductor advanced materials, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where it is thin
Recent-year filing counts show every tracked assignee at zero in the latest year, consistent with the broader slowdown after 2020 — this is a field to watch for renewed activity rather than one showing current momentum.
A moderately sized, mature corpus
With 376 families spanning 2015 to 2026, this is a defined but not sprawling landscape. The concentration of claims in H01L and C30B subclasses means new entrants face dense prior art in the core device and crystal-growth categories specifically.
US-centred, with Japan and Europe secondary
The United States receives roughly three times the filings of the next largest office. Germany, WIPO and the United Kingdom each receive single-digit to low double-digit counts, indicating that protection strategy in this field is not being pursued broadly across all major jurisdictions by most filers.
No assignee shows current-year activity
Every organisation with recent-year momentum data tracked here shows zero filings in the latest year, including established filers. Given the 18-month publication lag, this likely understates true recent activity, but it also confirms the broader post-2020 filing decline visible in the trend data.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | — |
| Sony Group Corporation | 0 | — |
| NEC Corporation | 0 | — |
| Panasonic Corporation | 0 | — |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (TSMC) | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The trend and citation data point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate or new claim drafting.
Run freedom-to-operate on the foundational nitride block
The top five most-cited records all relate to Group III-V nitride heterostructures with epitaxial ohmic contacts, one carrying 747 citations. Any new quantum well or lattice-matched design should be checked against this cluster before drafting.
Explore citation trees in EurekaTest the under-claimed adjacent branches
Nanotechnology overlap (B82Y) and memory-integration overlap (H10B) each appear in a small fraction of the 376 families, well below the device and crystal-growth core. These are candidate areas for a first claim rather than a design-around.
Map white space in EurekaWatch for renewed filing activity
All tracked assignees show zero filings in the latest year, but publication lag means recent activity is likely understated. Monitoring newly published families over the next 12–18 months will clarify whether the post-2020 decline is ending.
Set filing alerts in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
The dataset shows filing spread across several Japanese and multinational electronics and semiconductor manufacturers, alongside university filers, rather than a single dominant assignee. Co-assignee data shows the strongest joint filing pairs occurring only a handful of times, which suggests the field is populated by many independent filers rather than one clear leader. Reviewing the full assignee ranking table alongside citation counts gives a clearer picture of which organisations hold the most influential, as opposed to the most numerous, filings.
Filing peaked at 15 families in 2020, up from 9 in 2017, then dropped sharply to 2 by the 2022 midpoint. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent years in any such trend are understated, so the true 2023–2026 picture may be somewhat higher than currently visible. Even accounting for that lag, the trajectory through 2022 points to a cooling rather than an accelerating filing field.
US10651305B2, filed by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and published in 2020, claims a compound semiconductor device built from a substrate, a compound semiconductor layer, a channel layer and an electron supply layer, with source, drain and gate electrodes formed over the electron supply layer to create a quantum well structure. It is positioned as a power supply device and high-frequency amplifier application. Anyone designing a similar layered III-V heterostructure with source/drain/gate placement over an electron supply layer should review this claim structure specifically, rather than assuming novelty from a different substrate material alone.
Relative to the dense claim coverage in core semiconductor device (H01L) and crystal growth (C30B) categories, subclasses like B82Y nanotechnology applications and H10B memory device manufacture appear in only a small number of the 376 tracked families. Surface coating and deposition techniques under C23C are similarly less represented than the device and growth core. These lower-density areas are reasonable starting points for new claim drafting, though a full freedom-to-operate search against the foundational nitride patents is still necessary before filing there.
The United States is the largest receiving office by a wide margin, with 217 filings against 71 at the European Patent Office and 57 in Japan. Germany, the WIPO PCT route and the United Kingdom each receive far fewer filings, in the single digits to low double digits. This distribution suggests that most filers in this space are prioritising US and, secondarily, European and Japanese protection rather than pursuing broad multi-jurisdictional coverage.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.