Diamond and AlN Wafer Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Diamond and Aluminium Nitride Wafer Patents: Leaders, Filing Trends and Open Ground
48.8% concentration. The five leading assignees hold 600 of the 1,230 records in scope — the field is a concentrated race, not a fragmented one. Filings peaked at 75 in 2017 and have since settled into a lower, comparatively flat band; the most defensible recent comparison is 2021 (38) against 2024 (36), a -5% move over three complete years. Years after 2024 are still filling in under the publication lag and should not be read as a further decline.
- 1ELEMENT SIX LTD167
- 2ELEMENT SIX TECH LTD166
- 3SUMITOMO ELECTRIC INDUSTRIES LTD140
- 4SHIN ETSU CHEMICAL CO LTD77
- 5NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY50
See the full diamond and aluminium nitride wafers analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on diamond and AlN wafer patents
Who are the leading patent holders in diamond and aluminium nitride wafer technology?
The ranking is led by a single assignee with 167 records, well ahead of the rest of the field, with the top five combined holding 600 of the 1,230 records in scope (48.8%). The leading names span diamond materials specialists, Japanese electronics and chemical manufacturers, and national research institutes. This concentration means a new entrant is competing against established filing programmes rather than a wide-open field, so freedom-to-operate work should focus first on the leading group’s claim language.
Is patent filing in this field growing or slowing down?
Filing peaked at 75 in 2017 and has since settled lower, but the most reliable recent comparison — 2021 at 38 filings against 2024 at 36 — shows only a -5% change, essentially a plateau. Years after 2024 appear to drop further in the raw trend, but that is largely an artefact of the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, not a genuine falloff. Reading the last one to two years as a decline would be a misinterpretation of the data.
What patent classes cover diamond and AlN wafer technology?
The dominant class is C30B, crystal growth, which appears on 58.3% of the 1,230 records — more than any other single class. H01L (semiconductor devices) covers 32.2% and C23C (coating and surface deposition) covers 27.2%. Because records commonly carry more than one IPC code, these percentages overlap rather than partition the field, and the overlap itself is informative: many filings combine a growth-process claim with a device or coating claim in the same document.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Diamond and Aluminium Nitride Wafers covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.