News: Suppliers
8 September 2026
IVWorks strengthens GaN epi with AI-driven production system upgrade
IVWorks Co Ltd of Daejeon, South Korea – which was founded in 2011 and manufactures 100–200mm gallium nitride (GaN) epitaxial wafers for RF & power electronics applications – is accelerating the shift from automated production that follows fixed procedures to an autonomous process in which AI judges the existing state and decides the next action on its own. The shift is based on the company’s in-house AI epitaxy platform DOMM, which is used in its GaN epiwafer production.
Picture: IVWorks has progressively built DOMM, an AI-based smart factory system for compound semiconductor material production, since 2019, and now applies it across all of its mass-production lines. Pictured is the DOMM platform server room at the company’s Daejeon headquarters.
GaN epitaxy requires precise control of multiple process conditions to keep crystal growth stable, making it essential to continuously monitor and respond to even small changes during production. To address this, IVWorks has collected reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) data from its molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) process together with time-series data such as equipment temperature and pressure since 2019. To date, the company has accumulated more than 330 million time-series data points and over 30TB of RHEED data.
The accumulated data is also used in the actual mass-production process. AI models analyze RHEED and equipment data to assess growth conditions and determine whether there are any abnormalities, while the automation framework MRA (MBE Run Automation) is responsible for carrying out the actual process, from wafer loading and growth to unloading. Although the two systems have different roles, by working together, IVWorks has been able to gradually reduce human intervention and build a foundation for improving production stability.
Building on this experience, IVWorks is advancing its manufacturing system to use data not just for after-the-fact quality checks, but to monitor process conditions and guide production in real time. As a next step, the company plans to develop AI agents that combine equipment status, production history and quality data to recommend maintenance timing and production plans on their own, enabling uninterrupted production even at night and on weekends. The goal is to raise both quality and productivity, strengthening IVWorks’ competitiveness in GaN epitaxy production.
Through this effort, IVWorks aims to raise equipment uptime from about 84% to 89%, while streamlining staffing from about two operators per machine to 1.5.
In recognition of this in-house technology capability, IVWorks was recently selected to take part in a program run by South Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups to build AI-specialized smart factories. Through the program, the company plans to further expand the use of its accumulated manufacturing data and AI-based automation across its production environment.
“GaN epitaxial wafers are a key material for next-generation semiconductors, including 5G and 6G communications, AESA radar, and optical interconnects,” says chief information officer (CIO) Hongkyun Noh. “As mass production of GaN epitaxial wafers begins in earnest, combining data-driven autonomous processes will be essential to securing competitiveness in quality, delivery, and cost simultaneously.”
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