BAE and US Air Force Lab sign GaN agreement
BAE Systems has signed a cooperative agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for Phase 1 of a technical effort to transition GaN semiconductor technology developed by the US Air Force to its Advanced Microwave Products (AMP) Center.
As part of the effort, BAE will transfer and further enhance the technology, and scale it to 6-inch wafers to slash per-chip costs and improve the accessibility of this defence-critical technology.
Under the agreement, BAE will work with AFRL to establish a 140-nanometer GaN MMIC process that will be qualified for production by 2020, with products available to Department of Defense (DoD) suppliers through an open foundry service.
"Millimeter-wave GaN technologies today are produced in research and development laboratories in low volumes at high associated costs or in captive foundries that are not broadly accessible to defense suppliers," said Scott Sweetland, Advanced Microwave Products director at BAE Systems. "This effort will leverage AFRL's high-performance technology and BAE Systems' 6-inch manufacturing capability to advance the state of the art in GaN MMIC performance, reliability, and affordability while providing broader access to this critical technology."
The work on this project will primarily take place in BAE's 70,000-square-foot Microelectronics Centre (MEC) in Nashua, New Hampshire, where we research, develop, and produce compound semiconductor materials, devices, circuits, and modules for a wide range of microwave and millimeter-wave applications. The MEC has been an accredited DoD Category 1A Trusted Supplier since 2008, and fabricates integrated circuits in production quantities for critical DoD programs.
As part of the project, the AMP Center team will work closely with the company's FAST LabsT research organization and MMIC design experts from ENGIN-IC.
