Atomera, a semiconductor transistor materials and technology licensing company, announced it has entered into a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) with IQE plc, the leading global supplier of compound semiconductor wafer products and advanced material solutions, to bring high performance, cost-effective RF GaN to market. The collaboration leverages Atomera’s recently announced application of Mears Silicon Technology™ (MST®) to silicon substrates for RF GaN and IQE’s compound semiconductor epitaxy expertise. Under the agreement, the companies will collaborate to demonstrate GaN epitaxy on Atomera’s MST-enabled silicon wafers. With an initial focus on RF GaN-on-silicon applications, the work aims to demonstrate best-in-class linearity and loss for high volume RF markets.
“IQE has built its business on delivering compound semiconductor epitaxy that meets the industry’s highest performance bar, and this collaboration with Atomera is a natural extension of that work,” said Dr. Rodney Pelzel, chief strategy and technology officer at IQE. “We are pleased to partner with Atomera on MST for GaN-on-silicon. The technology has the potential to provide a cost-effective substrate that is able to achieve the performance required by the market.”
Atomera and IQE anticipate a multi-cycle development process, with engineering teams from both companies working together to optimize the multi-layer structure to identify the highest performing RF material. The JDA also leaves room for the companies to expand their work, both to further refine RF GaN and to pursue other GaN use cases, including power electronics.
The project will center on the production and testing of MST-enabled GaN-on-silicon wafers, with the goal of rapidly developing the best achievable MST-enabled GaN-on-silicon material and making samples available for foundry, IDM and fabless customer engagement.
“GaN has become critical to RF and power applications, but bringing high-performance GaN to volume production at a cost that works for mainstream markets remains a real challenge. This collaboration with IQE lets us apply MST’s performance advantages to that space with a partner who brings deep compound semiconductor expertise. IQE is more than a development partner for MST. They are a catalyst to accelerate MST GaN-on-silicon time to market and could become an influential manufacturer of MST-enabled wafers,” said Scott Bibaud, president and CEO of Atomera.
MST is a quantum-engineered epitaxial silicon material that enhances transistors to deliver significantly better performance in semiconductor devices while shrinking die sizes and reducing cost. When applied to GaN epitaxy, it enables improved RF GaN performance on silicon substrates.
Atomera’s patented material technology is designed to enable more efficient, better-controlled current flow, supporting improvements in device performance and power efficiency across a wide range of applications.
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