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June 23, 2008...It's been a long time coming, but two major USA compound semi houses, TriQuint Semiconductor of Hillsboro, Oregon and Cree of Durham, North Carolina have announced they're opening their doors to GaN electronic foundry customers (v.s. GaN-based LEDs) . Both companies took the opportunity of the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2008) in Atlanta, Georgia to make their announcements. The world has embraced GaN for LED applications rather nicely. Without GaN you simply wouldn't have blue spectrum LEDs (which includes green, white and UV). But for those of us who have been championing GaN for electronic applications for what seems to be decades, the fact that foundry doors are finally opening is great news. The only thing yet to be determined is if there are enough customers out there to make the efforts worthwhile.

As usual in the field of advanced compound semi materials science, this latest "overnight success story" has actually taken about 20 years to unfold. GaN electronics finally hit the ultimate commercialization goal by enjoying a few days in the spotlight at MTT-S in Atlanta. Stars of the show (from our point of view) were TriQuint and Cree with their individual flavors of GaN-based foundry services for electronic applications.

TriQuint is generically referring to their process line as "GaN Foundry Service" which has a nice, simple, straightforward ring to it, whereas Cree is capitalizing on their existing MMIC foundry offerings calling their foundry services an expansion of their standard full-wafer (SFW) MMIC Foundry service to include shared multi-project (SMP) "pizza mask" foundry runs on a quarterly basis. Cree's SMP service is available for both SiC MESFET and GaN HEMT MMIC processes. Not so straightforward, but if you're a MMIC designer, you get the gist. I call it all "GaN electronic foundry services" as there are sure to be more players in this arena if and when customers start to line up at the newly opened doors at TQ and Cree.

TriQuint's announcement was targeted to customers with circuit designs intended for production starts in September of 2008, underscoring all the virtues of GaN for electronic applications that those of us inside CS circles have come to know so well. The fresh phrases they used that I liked especially were: (1) that GaN "offers considerable power savings and smaller device form factors for space-conscious design applications" which gave it a somewhat sexy sound, and (2) that: "The benefits lead to better performance and lower overall system costs for the customer, and can shrink carbon footprints for network system operators focused on reducing global warming" which makes GaN sound downright trendy.

TriQuint's intrepid director of defense product marketing, Gailon Brehm, who has been connected with the various DARPA-backed wide bandgap development projects for many years, was spokesman for the offering noting that TriQuint’s GaN Foundry services will initially target power amplifier applications through the Ku frequency band. He was quoted as saying, "Now that we’ve released the first member of our GaN discrete amplifier family for defense, commercial and space applications, we’re welcoming Foundry customers who have their own circuit designs ready for September 2008 starts. We want to meet with customers, identify their needs and develop a successful implementation production schedule." I'm sure they do. Virtually everyone in the GaN electronics community wants to meet with customers and implement a production schedule. They'd like it even better if they were prompt-paying customers with high volume requirements and feasible specs.

TriQuint has been a tremendous supporter of early stage GaN development and has kept an open mind about GaN from the outset. You may recall they were the first to run Nitronex' designs for impressive proof of concept. They've had their noses to the GaN grindstone since GaN became a workable reality, and their due diligence looks like it's now positioned well. They had a huge order come in March from IQE Plc for GaN epiwafers with deliveries scheduled throughout 2008 that have helped support TriQuint's ongoing development efforts and products for both defense and commercial applications. IQE itself has a great commercial GaN effort going via its acquisition of the old Emcore epiwafer foundry services, now called IQE-RF in Somerset, New Jersey.

TriQuint's own high frequency GaN electronic device family, around which the foundry services are likely to revolve, includes discrete die-level devices operate up to 18 GHz, have 55% power added efficiency (PAE), and can produce up to 90 Watts of output power. The boilerplate marketing pitch underscores that "GaN power technology has garnered significant defense and commercial interest because of its ability to operate with substantially greater power density (more wattage per square millimeter) and efficiency compared to other commonly used solid-state amplifier technologies. These factors enable the development of more efficient, smaller amplifiers capable of operating at higher system voltages, which lower overall system current demand and reduce the cost of power conversion." They turned to Strategy Analytics for the applications' pitch stating that...

"Strategy Analytics sees future radar, communications, EW [electronic warfare] and smart munitions platforms in the defense sector driving early demand for GaN. There are also a myriad of commercial opportunities within wireless infrastructure and satellite communications as well as those in broadcasting and medical markets. Inherent GaN properties including high power at high frequency, coupled with high voltage and wide bandwidth performance, make gallium nitride a technology that will see broad applications as it evolves in the marketplace. GaN’s further advantages including reduced form factors and weight savings translate into system efficiencies that positively impact both capital and operating expenditures.” That credited to our good friend Asif Anwar, Director, GaAs and Semiconductor Technologies, Strategy Analytics.

Cree has also been working on GaN for a long, long time. Traditionally a SiC house, they acquired tremendous GaN expertise when they integrated ATMI's GaN team, headed by our good friend George Brandes. George traditionally grows great GaN and, he's a great team player. But when Cree acquires you it's almost as if you fell off the face of the earth. You never hear from those people again until an announcement like this proves that they're not only still doing what they do best, but that they've been up to something really special behind those closed doors. My hunch is that what Cree is offering could be the best of the best. Cree's announcement at MTT-S of the ensuing of GaN foundry services also came with the announcement of their latest GaN MMICs which include a wideband 5 watt distributed amplifier operating from DC to 6 GHz and a higher power, 25 watt reactively matched amplifier operating from 2.5 to 6 GHz. Both MMICs are geared for a variety of applications where high power over broad bandwidths is required. Their foundry offering is an expansion of what they call their standard full-wafer (SFW) MMIC Foundry service to include shared multi-project (SMP) "pizza mask" foundry runs on a quarterly basis. This SMP service is available for both SiC MESFET and GaN HEMT MMIC processes.

Jim Milligan, Cree's director of RF and microwave products was spokesman for the MTT rollout and noted that: "These products can provide our customers with the performance improvement and size reduction benefits of microwave circuit integration in convenient 'drop-in' 50 ohm amplifiers. Further, our new SMP foundry service will be ideal for lower-cost prototyping of SiC or GaN MMICs by allowing customers to purchase a portion of a shared multi-project wafer." Our good pal John Palmour, executive VP for advanced devices at Cree and incredible longtime champion of wide bandgap electronics, weighed in adding that: "This MMIC milestone is the culmination of many years of internal investment and external support from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Title III Office, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). We are extremely pleased to see the results of these efforts beginning to pay off for both the military and commercial markets." That's giving credit where credit is due. Overdue, in fact. GaN electronics has come a long way, the hard way. The next great news will be that device designers are walking through the newly opened foundry doors.

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