GaN HEMT Doping & Implantation Patents: Who Leads, Trends 2026
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 107 records and has not returned to that level since, with the 2022 midpoint at 79 — a mature, flat-to-declining filing pattern rather than a growth curve.
- Every tracked assignee shows 0 filings in the latest year, including a -100% YoY drop for Mitsubishi Electric, which is partly a publication-lag artefact but also signals that activity has consolidated onto a smaller set of active filers.
- The five most-cited records all predate 2018 and anchor basic heterojunction and gate structure claims, meaning newer filers are building on top of a settled foundational layer rather than opening new claim territory.
Filing growth compares 2021 (98 records) with 2024 (71) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 1,417 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 1,417 patent families at the intersection of gallium nitride HEMT device structures and doping or implantation techniques — selective area doping, ion implantation, and p-type doping activation — filed between 2015 and mid-2026. The search combines device-level claims (GaN HEMT, GaN transistor, AlGaN/GaN heterojunction) with process-level claims on how dopants are introduced and activated, which is the harder engineering problem in nitride devices because of nitrogen loss during high-temperature anneals.
Filing offices concentrate heavily in the United States, followed by Europe, WIPO/PCT and China, with Germany and Austria carrying a smaller but non-trivial share — consistent with a field where US-based defense and power-electronics suppliers file first and internationalise selectively rather than filing everywhere.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,417 families: when the claims were filed, and which IPC subclasses they sit in.
A peak year that has not repeated
Filings ran at 107 in 2017, the high point of the series, then eased toward the 2022 midpoint of 79 and continued lower into the partial 2026 count. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the last one to two years will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be — but the multi-year direction here is flat-to-declining, not an artefact of the cut-off alone.
Concentrated in core semiconductor-device classes
H01L (general semiconductor devices) covers the large majority of records at 1,296, with H10D — the newer general semiconductor-device subclass — close behind at 561, and smaller but real activity in H10P, H10W and H10N. Crystal growth (C30B, 40 records) and RF filter/impedance work (H03H, 34) and laser devices (H01S, 27) sit at the edges, marking where doping and implantation techniques cross into adjacent device families rather than staying purely inside HEMT structures.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,417 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Gallium Nitride HEMT Doping and Implantation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about gallium nitride hemt doping and implantation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe foundational claims everyone cites
METHOD FOR IMPROVING SHORT-CIRCUIT CAPABILITY OF ENHANCEMENT-MODE GaN HEMT AND ITS DEVICE STRUCTURE
Filed by Peking University and published 2025-03-06, this record describes combining a conventional enhancement-mode GaN HEMT with a gate-source-shorted depletion-mode GaN HEMT, using metal deposited in the active region between gate and source to clamp saturation current and improve short-circuit ruggedness.US20250081574A1 — abstract truncated for length; see the full record for complete claim language.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20150014632A1 | Advanced Heterojunction Devices and Methods of Manufacturing Advanced Heterojunction Devices | 558 |
| 2 | US20030020092A1 | Insulating gate AlGaN/GaN HEMT | 541 |
| 3 | US6586781B2 | Group III nitride based FETs and HEMTs with reduced trapping and method for producing the same | 509 |
| 4 | US20170358670A1 | Diamond on iii-nitride device | 476 |
| 5 | US6064082A | Heterojunction field effect transistor | 358 |
| 6 | US20090267078A1 | Enhancement Mode III-N HEMTs | 323 |
| 7 | US20040009649A1 | Wafer bonding of thinned electronic materials and circuits to high performance substrates | 314 |
| 8 | US20100025730A1 | Normally-off Semiconductor Devices and Methods of Fabricating the Same | 298 |
| 9 | US20090058532A1 | Nitride semiconductor device, doherty amplifier and drain voltage controlled amplifier | 290 |
| 10 | US20090146185A1 | Insulated gate e-mode transistors | 283 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings simply because they have had more years to accumulate citations — read this as a map of foundational influence, not of current filing activity.
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
Four read-throughs from the trend, the citation table and the co-filing data.
A field past its filing peak
The drop from 107 in 2017 to a partial 5 in the most recent year is steeper than publication lag alone explains — the 2022 midpoint of 79 already shows the decline underway. New entrants are filing into a space where the core structural claims are a decade old.
Foundational claims sit with a handful of records
The five most-cited records span basic heterojunction structure, insulating-gate AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, reduced-trapping FET designs and diamond-on-nitride heat management — all predating 2018. Anything filed today on core device structure has to design around this layer first.
Collaboration is narrow and named-inventor-driven
Only ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest links pair a single company with a specific named inventor rather than two companies jointly filing — a sign of internal inventor concentration rather than cross-company joint development.
Process claims cluster tightly, then thin out
The overwhelming majority of records sit in the two general semiconductor-device subclasses (H01L, H10D). Crystal growth, RF filters and laser devices each carry only a few dozen records, marking the edges where doping and implantation techniques have been adapted but not heavily claimed.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to gallium nitride hemt doping and implantation, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | SAXLER ADAM WILLIAM | 11 |
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | SRIRAM SAPTHARISHI | 8 |
| Intel Corporation | THEN HAN WUI | 7 |
| Intel Corporation | RADOSAVLJEVIC MARKO | 7 |
| Intel Corporation | DASGUPTA SANSAPTAK | 7 |
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | The Regents of the University of California | 5 |
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | SMITH RICHARD PETER | 5 |
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | WU YIFENG | 4 |
Strongest pairs link one company to one named inventor rather than two companies — treat this as inventor concentration, not joint filing activity.
Who holds the claims, and where activity has gone quiet
Recent-year momentum tells a consistent story here: every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year, which given the 18-month publication lag likely understates true activity but still points to a field where filing has slowed across the board rather than shifted between competitors.
No assignee shows fresh momentum
Wolfspeed, Intel, Raytheon, HRL Laboratories, Mitsubishi Electric and NXP USA all register zero filings in the most recent year, with Mitsubishi Electric down -100% YoY. This is consistent with a field where the publication window has not caught up with the most recent filings, but the multi-year trend already pointed downward before this.
Filing concentrates around named inventors
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset pairs Wolfspeed with a single named inventor at 11 co-filings, and a second Wolfspeed pairing at 8 — suggesting a small internal team drives much of that company's output in this space rather than broad cross-team filing.
Foundational IP predates the current assignee roster
The two most-cited records in the corpus were published in 2015 and 2003 respectively, well before the current wave of filers. Any new entrant's freedom-to-operate analysis needs to start with this older layer, not with recently active assignees.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | — |
| Raytheon Company | 0 | — |
| HRL Laboratories, LLC | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| NXP USA, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Transphorm, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a mature, consolidating field with a narrow foundational layer — here is how to act on that.
Map freedom-to-operate against the citation anchors
Start any new filing or product design against the handful of pre-2018 records carrying the heaviest citation counts, since they define the structural claim space everything else builds on.
Explore citation mapping in EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches before they fill in
Selective-area activation and implantation damage recovery show thinner claim density than the core HEMT structure — worth a focused search before drafting into that space.
Run a white space search in EurekaWatch for the publication-lag correction
The zero-filing latest year across every tracked assignee will partially revise upward as pending applications publish; re-check momentum in two to three quarters.
Set up monitoring in EurekaQuestions practitioners ask about this landscape
The most-cited records in this corpus are US20150014632A1 (558 citations), US20030020092A1 (541 citations) and US6586781B2 (509 citations), which cover advanced heterojunction device structures, insulating-gate AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, and reduced-trapping Group III nitride FETs respectively. These are older, foundational filings rather than recent activity, so they define the structural baseline that later filers design around. Anyone assessing freedom to operate in this space should review these three closely before drafting new claims.
No — filings peaked at 107 in 2017, eased to 79 by the 2022 midpoint, and continued declining into the partial most-recent-year count of 5. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the very latest year understates true activity, but the multi-year direction across the full series is flat to declining rather than growing. This points to a field where core claim space is largely occupied rather than one still being actively staked out.
Record counts thin out in areas that overlap adjacent technology classes: crystal-growth-integrated doping (C30B, 40 records), RF filter co-integration (H03H, 34 records) and laser-diode nitride crossover (H01S, 27 records), compared to over a thousand records in the core semiconductor-device classes. Selective-area p-type activation anneals and ion-implantation damage recovery specifically are under-represented relative to the volume of general HEMT structure claims. These are reasonable places to run a dedicated prior-art search before committing to new claim language.
US20250081574A1, filed by Peking University and published 2025-03-06, covers a specific device architecture that combines an enhancement-mode GaN HEMT with a gate-source-shorted depletion-mode GaN HEMT, using a metal deposition in the active region between gate and source to clamp saturation current for improved short-circuit ruggedness. It blocks that specific combined-device configuration and the described metal-connection approach to source clamping, not enhancement-mode GaN HEMTs generally or short-circuit protection techniques broadly. Designs using different clamping mechanisms, such as separate protection circuitry or alternative gate structures, would likely sit outside its claim scope, though a formal clearance opinion should confirm claim boundaries.
Wolfspeed shows the strongest internal co-filing pattern in the dataset, with its top named-inventor pairing appearing in 11 co-filings, followed by an 8-count pairing with a second named inventor. Intel, Raytheon, HRL Laboratories, Mitsubishi Electric and NXP USA also appear among the tracked assignees, though every one of these six shows zero filings in the latest tracked year. That flat recent momentum, combined with the field's overall decline from its 2017 peak, suggests a smaller and more stable set of active filers rather than a growing competitive field.
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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.