Category Archives: Semiconductors

AIXTRON SE today announced that it is participating as a key partner in the recently announced European Union (EU) Future Emerging Technology (FET) flagship project “Graphene.” As part of the consortium, AIXTRON will bring its expertise in deposition processes for graphene and as such shall lead the production work package of the flagship.

“Congratulations to the leadership and partners of the Graphene Flagship,” Dr. Bernd Schulte, Chief Operating Officer at AIXTRON, said. “AIXTRON is proud to be a part of this future-oriented research initiative, which will have considerable impact on the European economy.”

Dr. Ken Teo, director of Nanoinstruments at AIXTRON, said AIXTRON’s key contribution will be to enable high-quality large-scale graphene growth through the development of next generation deposition equipment.

“Working with graphene thin-film producers, bulk graphene manufacturers and associated partners, graphene will be produced for a variety of applications ranging from wireless communications to display, sensing and energy storage,” said Teo. “This is a unique opportunity for us to interact with and understand the requirements of R&D and industrial end-users.”

“For a disruptive new material such as graphene, long-term investment is required to create the entire value chain and end market applications,” Dr. Schulte added. “Support for the Graphene Flagship over the next decade by the EU is indeed a significant commitment that makes this possible. The development furthermore confirms AIXTRON’s long-term strategy in enabling the deposition of new electronic materials such as graphene.”

Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, with Prof. Jari Kinaret as the flagship director, will coordinate 126 academic and industrial research groups in 17 European countries. The EU funding for the academic-industrial consortium starts with an initial 30-month-EU budget of 54 million euro which will be extended up to 10 years with 1 billion Euro total project cost, with further contributions coming from the Horizon 2020 program and local programs from various EU countries.

Graphene Flagship project
A 300 mm wafer of graphene produced on an AIXTRON system, presented by Prof. Jari Kinaret, Director of the Graphene Flagship, and Neelie Kroes, EU Digital Agenda Commissioner.

University of Manchester graphene researchers have been awarded a £3.5 million (or approximately US$5 million) funding boost that could bring desalination plants, safer food packaging and enhanced disease detection closer to reality.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the research focuses on membranes that could provide solutions to worldwide problems: from stopping power stations releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, to detecting the chemical signals produced by agricultural pests.

The latest research grant comes just months after The University of Manchester was awarded £2.2 million (or approximately US$3 million) to lead research into graphene batteries and supercapacitors for energy storage.

No molecules can get through a perfect sheet of graphene and when platelets of graphene are built into more complex structures, highly selective membranes can be generated.  The aim is, together with industrial partners, to produce working membranes for applications related to sustainability, energy, health, defense and food security.

Wonder material graphene was first isolated in 2004 at The University of Manchester by Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov. Their work earned them the 2010 Nobel prize for Physics.

Graphene is the world’s thinnest, strongest and most conductive material, and has the potential to revolutionize a huge number of diverse applications; from smartphones and ultrafast broadband to drug delivery and computer chips.

The membrane program builds on ground-breaking research at the University. Previous research showed that graphene oxide membranes are highly permeable to water, while being completely impermeable to gases and organic liquids when dry.

These membranes will be developed for a variety of applications, such as the removal of water when making biofuels by fermentation, and as components of fuel cells.

The research is led by Professor Peter Budd, of the School of Chemistry. He said: “We have also invented a range of polymers – called Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity (PIMs) – which form membranes that are very good for separating gases and organic liquids.

“These are of interest, for example, for removing carbon dioxide from power station flue gases, or for removing organic compounds from water.  By combining PIMs with graphene, we expect to produce membranes with even better performance under long-term conditions of use.

“We will also be looking at practical ways of using the ability of graphene to act as a perfect barrier in, for example, food packaging, and we will be building graphene into sensors for detecting human diseases and agricultural pests.”

It’s no secret that Samsung is up against Apple in many ways, in products, sales and innovation. However, even in the face of Apple’s patent infringement lawsuits, Samsung is still climbing the charts. The electronics giant sold approximately $53 billion in revenue in the last quarter of 2012, in comparison to Apple’s $36 billion in revenue, though the profit margins both companies are seeing were relatively similar. And while Bloomberg is predicting Apple will post its lowest sales increase since 2009, Samsung is reportedly poised for big growth in a number of sectors.  

Samsung grabs No. 3 foundry spot

Samsung jumped into the foundry scene in mid-2010, and quickly became one of the anticipated long-term leaders in the sector. It’s now easily the biggest IDM foundry operation, with sales nearly 10 times that of IBM, IC Insights noted in January. IC Insights’ August update projected Samsung finishing in fourth place just behind UMC, separated by about $400 million, but anticipated Samsung surpassing the Taiwan rival in 2013.

Samsung followed a sparkling 82 percent growth in 2011 by nearly doubling sales again to $4.33 billion, putting it just shy of GLOBALFOUNDRIES which grew sales a solid 31 percent last year to $4.56B. In fact IC Insights believes Samsung will challenge GLOBALFOUNDRIES for the No.2 spot before 2013 is done, leveraging its leading-edge capacity and huge capital spending budget. With dedicated IC foundry capacity reaching 150,000 300mm wafers/month by 4Q12, and an average revenue/wafer of $3000, Samsung’s IC foundry capacity could pull down $5.4B in annual sales, the analyst firm calculates.

How did Samsung get so big so fast in the foundry business? It supplied chips to nearly half of the industry’s 750 million smartphones shipped in 2012 — application processors for the 220 million of its own handsets in 2012, plus the 133 million iPhones Apple shipped.

Thanks to the Galaxy S4, Samsung has 99% of the AMOLED market

Samsung has invested a considerable amount into the AMOLED market, which is now poised for steady growth, thanks to a growing demand for high-end smartphones and tablets. According to Forbes contributor Haydn Shaughnessy, Samsung now holds 99% of the AMOLED market.

AMOLED display shipments for mobile handset applications are expected to grow to 447.7 million units in 2017, up from 195.1 million units in 2013, according to insights from the IHS iSuppli Emerging Displays Service at information and analytics provider IHS. Within the mobile handset display market, the market share for AMOLED displays is forecast to grow from 7.9% in 2013 to 15.2 percent in 2017, as presented in the figure below. AMOLED’s market share for 4-inch or larger handset displays employed in smartphones is set to increase to 24.4% in 2017, up from 23.0% in 2013.

“Because of their use in marquee products like the Galaxy S4, high-quality AMOLEDs are growing in popularity and gaining share at the expense of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens,” said Vinita Jakhanwal, director for mobile & emerging displays and technology at IHS. “These attractive AMOLEDs are part of a growing trend of large-sized, high-resolution displays used in mobile devices. With the S4 representing the first time that a full high-definition (HD) AMOLED has been used in mobile handsets, Samsung continues to raise the profile of this display technology.”

Samsung anticipates MEMS pressure sensor market boom

Samsung has been ahead of its time in its adoption of MEMS pressure sensors, anticipating the state of the market and getting a jump on the competition.

Global shipments of MEMS pressure sensors in cellphones are set to rise to 681 million units in 2016, up more than eightfold from 82 million in 2012, according to the IHS iSuppli MEMS & Sensors Service at information and analytics provider IHS. Shipments this year are expected to double to 162 million units, as presented in the attached figure, primarily due to Samsung’s usage of pressure sensors in the Galaxy S4 and other smartphone models.

“Samsung is the only major original equipment manufacturer (OEM) now using pressure sensors in all its flagship smartphone models,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at IHS. “The pressure device represents just one component among a wealth of different sensors used in the S4.”

Besides Samsung, few other OEMs have been using pressure sensors in smartphones. The only other smartphone OEMs to use pressure sensors in their products are Sony Mobile in a couple of models in 2012, and a few Chinese vendors, like Xiaomi.

Apple, which pioneered the use of MEMS sensors in smartphones, does not employ pressure sensors at the moment in the iPhone. However, IHS expects Apple will start them in 2014, which will contribute to another doubling of the market in 2014 to 325 million units.

But what about the patent infringement suit?

Six months after Samsung was ordered to pay an unprecedented $1.05 billion to Apple in the notorious patent infringement suit, Judge Lucy Koh, the federal judge presiding over two Apple v. Samsung cases in California, entered an order striking $450 million from the damages award determined by a jury in August 2012. This corresponds to 14 of the 28 Samsung products in question in the initial lawsuit. Koh disagreed with the notice date provided by Apple concerning its patents-in-suit, and, as a result, a new damages trial must be held, most likely after the appellate proceedings, which were sought by both parties.

The new trial could mean good news or bad news for Samsung. There is the possibility that the court could rule in favor of a reduction of damages to be paid. However, it is also just as likely that the court could rule Samsung owe Apple even more than the original $1.05 billion ordered in August.

Some analysts have speculated that, if the suit holds, consumers could see a jump in prices of Samsung, Google and Android devices. Only time will tell if will a price that the masses will be willing to pay. If it is, don’t expect to see Samsung slowing down any time soon.

Bruker announced today the release of the Dimension Icon SSRM-HR, a new atomic force microscope (AFM) configuration including the Scanning Spreading Resistance Microscopy (SSRM) module, designed specifically for high-resolution (HR) semiconductor characterization. Integrating Bruker’s industry-leading Dimension Icon AFM platform with an environmental control system capable of 1ppm gas purity and high-vacuum control, the Dimension Icon SSRM-HR system provides vastly improved repeatability and spatial resolution in semiconductor carrier profiling. As confirmed by Imec (www.imec.be), buried gate oxide layers as thin as 5Å are detected routinely.

“As our customers continue to improve their products to follow the semiconductor roadmap, higher spatial resolution electrical characterization is a key requirement,” said David V. Rossi, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Bruker’s AFM Business. “The new Dimension Icon SSRM-HR combines the leading productivity and large programmable stage of our top performance AFM platform with atomic resolution, and the most accurate carrier profiling optimization to meet the specific demands of next-generation technology nodes.”

“We chose Bruker because they offer the only solution that meets our needs,” added Prof. Vandervorst, Imec Fellow and Department Head, Materials and Components Analysis, based in Leuven, Belgium. “Our decision followed a rigorous evaluation of spatial resolution and repeatability in carrier profiling. Being at the forefront in tackling the roadblocks to continued technology scaling means we have the most stringent requirements.”

semiconductor solutions

Machinery Production in China is forecast this year to rebound 11 percent to $426 billion after suffering from overcapacity in 2012 that limited industry growth, according to a new report from IMS Research, now part of IHS Inc.

The projected growth in 2013 is encouraging, given that revenue last year grew by less than 10 percent- the lowest rate in many years – following the severe impact of a weak export market and a shortage in investments. Prior to the slowdown, China’s machinery production had expanded by a robust 20 percent in 2011 to $379.8 billion. Economic performance was also strong in 2010 after the government’s deployment of a 4 trillion yuan ($643 billion) stimulus policy in 2009.

 Trouble began in the second half of 2011 because of high inflation and an overheating economy, and the central government stepped in by implementing tightening policies. Even so, other difficulties persisted, according to findings from the report entitled “The Machinery Production Yearbook – China – 2013.”

 “Many industries in China suffered from significant over capacity in 2012, including construction machinery production, paper and paperboard production, and photovoltaic manufacturing to name a few,” commented Jay Tang, author of the report and analyst for industrial automation at IHS. “The Chinese government will likely maintain a tightening policy in the first half of 2013, but this won’t continue in the second half because of a bad export situation and the slowdown in economic growth.”

 China’s machinery relies heavily on the export market, but the weakening demand of export markets in the U.S. and the European Union is making manufacturers pay more attention to the domestic market. Among machinery industries in China that experienced decreased activity in 2012 were those engaged in cranes, rubber and plastics, semiconductors, textiles, woodworking, and metalworking.

 A few industries grew during the same time, mostly in areas related to fulfilling domestic consumption. These included agricultural machinery, electronics and electronics assembly, food, beverage & tobacco machinery, packaging machinery and industrial robotics.

Signs emerged by year-end that the China economy was starting to recover after a generally tough 2012 for machine builders. Real estate was heating up, and investments in the railway system were continuing.

 Still, the Chinese government is expected to remain cautious this year with any stimulus policy as the economy improves, given concerns over excesses resulting from the massive stimulus during the 2009 global recession. China’s economy also will likely remain constrained by limited Eurozone demand and weakness in non-state investments, IHS believes.

The Temescal Division of Ferrotec Corporation, a global supplier of materials, components, and precision system solutions and a manufacturer of electron beam evaporation systems, today announced the Temescal UEFC-5700, a ultra-high efficiency electron beam metallization system for lift-off compound semiconductor applications. The UEFC-5700 is the first Temescal system to incorporate the Auratus Deposition Process Enhancement Methodology, offering near-perfect uniformity while delivering up to 40 percent increases in material collection efficiency, resulting in significant cost savings on process materials like gold and platinum compared to traditional box coaters.

The Temescal UEFC-5700 is designed for compound semiconductor production environments that use lift-off electron beam evaporation processes. The UEFC-5700 features a unique conical shaped vacuum chamber that reduces volume and surface area, significantly reducing pump-down time. The system also features a patent-pending High-Uniformity Lift-off Assembly (HULA) design that uses a dual-axis motion to optimize collection efficiency.

"With the UEFC-5700, we have significantly improved the throughput efficiency of traditional lift-off coating processes. From the unique chamber design to the HULA carrier system, the UEFC-5700 improves pumping and batch capacity with excellent uniformity across all evaporated materials, enabling the system to run more wafers and more batches per day than any conventional box coater," said Gregg Wallace, managing director of Ferrotec’s Temescal division. "The biggest benefit to users of this system is the improvement in uniformity and collection efficiency of all materials being evaporated. For IDMs and foundries, this equates to improved yields of better devices that cost much less to produce. "

The Temescal UEFC-5700 offers increased wafer production capacity, up to forty-two 150mm wafers in a batch, without a significant change in raw material or energy consumption. In terms of footprint and power consumption, the UEFC-5700 is virtually identical to the FC-4400 system, Temescal’s largest production system.

With its unique conical shaped load-locked chamber and 44,000 liters/second of installed cryogenic pumping capacity, the UEFC-5700 reaches process pressures significantly faster than most conventional box coaters. Systems have reached 5E-07 Torr in under 10 minutes, improving production cycle times and the number of batches that can be run per shift or day.

The system incorporates Temescal’s Auratus deposition process enhancement methodology. Auratus is a patent-pending proprietary optimization methodology for lift-off electron beam evaporative coating that incorporates patent pending technology to achieve unprecedented levels of uniformity, precision, and collection efficiency.

electron beam metallization system

The second Cleanzone on October 22 and 23, 2013 in Frankfurt am Main is off to a promising start with a stronger profile. Last year, the trade fair and congress made a successful debut as the new international industry meeting point for cleanroom technology. It is targeted towards all companies and sectors in which industrial production is taking place under cleanroom conditions today and tomorrow.

2013 the trade fair will therefore be focusing even more precisely on visitors coming from two important industrial sectors: “Technology & Micro-Technology,” which is targeted towards the micro-electronics, micro-system technology, semi-conductors, aerospace technology, optical and laser technology, automotive, electronics and precision engineering markets. The other main focus comprises “Life Sciences,” with the markets of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, sterile production of food, medical research, pharmacies and biotechnology. Overlaps can be found in the areas of medical technology and packaging solutions.

"With the stronger profile we are underlining the interdisciplinary character of Cleanzone. At the same time, we directly address those industries that are relatively new to this fascinating and future-oriented cross-sectional technology,” says Johannes Schmid-Wiedersheim, Director New Events at Messe Frankfurt Exhibition.

Cleanzone in Frankfurt

Cleanzone is the new international cross-sector meeting place for cleanroom technology. It is organized by Messe Frankfurt and supported by its marketing and content partner ReinraumAkademie Leipzig. Participants from 13 countries made their way to Frankfurt for the debut in October 2012, and both the trade fair and congress earned top marks: 89 percent of visitors and 84 percent of exhibitors were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the event’s debut, 46 percent of visitors were from top management, and 88 percent stated that they were able to influence purchasing and procurement decisions in their companies. Both the international scope and thematic range of the trade fair and congress are to be expanded in their second year.

Consumers increasingly want to use their media tablets and smartphones to stream high-definition video to displays in their cars, a phenomenon that will help to nearly double the size of the market for semiconductors used in automotive wired and wireless network applications from 2011 to 2018.

Revenue in 2018 for semiconductors used for in-vehicle connectivity and networking is forecast to reach $841.8 million, up from $438.8 million in 2011, according to an IHS Automotive Infotainment Market Tracker Report from information and analytics provider IHS. The market this year is expected to rise to $585.4 million, up from $545.1 million last year. The segment takes a big jump to $663.4 million next year, followed by two years of revenue in the $700 million range and then clearing the $800 million mark in 2017, as shown in the figure below.

mobile video streaming drives demand for semiconductors in cars

“The need for audio and video data streaming inside motor vehicles is real and represents a significant growth opportunity for semiconductor suppliers,” said Luca DeAmbroggi, senior analyst for automotive infotainment at IHS. “Consumers are expressing a greater desire to watch content from mobile gadgets like handsets and tablets on vehicle displays including DVD players, rear-seat entertainment panels and navigation units. Meanwhile, original equipment manufacturers (OEM) of both cars and vehicle infotainment systems also are promoting such functionality for pure entertainment as well as for safety purposes, such as when vehicle displays show traffic.”

Other driving forces for semiconductor in-vehicle connectivity and networking include Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and safety applications, as well as headunit and entertainment systems embedded in the vehicle.

Heavy traffic for car video systems

The amount of video that can be streamed to the car’s display units could be extensive, requiring careful design of the entire video interface architecture to allow seamless transmission. Moreover, several considerations could affect the video link requirements for bandwidth and security, including digital content protection, the quality of the video and audio streams, and the real-time video-processing capabilities of equipment. Whether wired or wireless technology is chosen for in-car connectivity will depend on cost, long-term semiconductor support from suppliers, readiness for integration within the vehicle, and issues related to performance and quality.

Getting on the wireless superhighway

Features like high-definition video, cloud streaming and content sharing among multiple devices already are available in industry segments like home entertainment. Because of this, the same requirements are expected to drive the integration of such features in vehicle infotainment systems.

Among the high-definition wireless technologies now available or under development for vehicle infotainment, 802.11ad (WiGig) appears to be the most suitable solution.

The 802.11ad technology claims a throughput of approximately 7 gigabytes per second compared to Wi-Fi speeds of 100 megabytes per second. It is free from license fees, and can transmit data directly over wireless HDMI, a commonly used interface for high definition.

Already, Japan’s Panasonic has plans to embed a WiGig module on an SD memory card for use in cars by the middle of this year. And while its coverage of 1 to 3 meters is considered by some to be short and tantamount to a physical drawback, that range is enough in most commercial vehicles for video and audio transmission between passengers in a car to their display unit of choice.

A variant of the 801.11ad technology also exists in the form of 801.11ac, which has a lower data transmission rate of 1 gigabyte per second. San Diego-based Qualcomm is among the semiconductor suppliers preparing such a solution for vehicle use, but the application is not expected before 2015.

Other wireless HD technologies for vehicle infotainment systems include WirelessHD, WHDI, WiDi/Miracast and Multistream Wi-Fi.

Wired technologies plug in to automotive market

Several indicators suggest that an automotive version of Ethernet might soon be available, backed by an increase in bandwidth and safety application requirements, and supported by many key auto players that believe Ethernet offers several benefits. Among wired technologies for in-car connectivity, Ethernet AVB can be adapted to fi t tough automotive wiring requirements, with BMW targeting its first pilot vehicles with Ethernet by 2013-14 and a complete Ethernet-cabled vehicle by 2020.

A second wired technology revolves around dedicated network architectures such as Media-Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) in order to achieve high data-rate throughput and reliable performance for multimedia applications. MOST can be found in high-end vehicle brands, but the MOST bus has limitations that could jeopardize its ability to deliver adequate performance for future content-transmission systems in vehicle infotainment devices.

Questions also exist about whether MOST and Ethernet can coexist, and in what time frame, or if Ethernet will instead be predominant in the midterm due to its superior cost position over MOST.

Other wired technologies expected to compete for a place in the vehicle are LVDS, APIX, HDMI and MHL. In particular, HDMI and MHL are expected to be present soon in cars of the future, following the momentum that both technologies currently enjoy in smartphones and other handheld consumer applications.

Wired or wireless?

Wireless technologies provide obvious ease of transfer for consumers by dispensing with physical wiring altogether, but drawbacks exist like error rates in higher-bit transmissions, as well as sensitivity to interference that might make wireless technologies unsuitable for safety-critical vehicle applications.

Meanwhile, wired technologies like Ethernet seem ready for deployment, but stringent automotive requirements that target high electromagnetic interference for long wiring solutions—possibly running along the entire vehicle—must also be taken into consideration.

The consensus seems to be that high-definition wireless deployment in automobiles may not be feasible in the short term due to limited supplier engagement, together with currently incomplete specifications and standards.

Overall, it will be up to the consumer electronics field and its influence on the automotive sector to make high-definition video streaming happen, further boosting passenger flexibility to interact with a vehicle’s infotainment system, IHS Automotive believes.

ProPlus Design Solutions, Inc. yesterday launched NanoSpice, the next-generation high-capacity, high-performance parallel SPICE simulator for giga-scale circuit simulation.

“New simulation technology is essential for deep nanometer technology designs where process variations significantly impact circuit yield and performance,” affirms Dr. Zhihong Liu, ProPlus’ executive chairman, who adds that designers cannot settle for capacity or performance and sacrifice accuracy. “Demand has never been greater for highly accurate, giga-scale simulations for large post-layout designs.”

The need for giga-scale simulations is being driven by complex designs and because of the large number of simulations required to design for variation effects. Traditional SPICE simulators lack capacity requirements even with parallelization. FastSPICE simulators that deliver capacity at the cost of accuracy are losing steam as an increasing number of designs require post-layout verification that weakens circuit hierarchy. FastSPICE’s table model approach, as well as its approximated matrix solutions, is prone to unreliable results and poor usability for complicated giga-scale designs with multiple operating modes and supply voltages.

Introducing NanoSpice, Giga-Scale Pure SPICE Circuit Simulator

NanoSpice is a pure SPICE circuit simulator matching the industry’s highest accuracy standard. Because it shares the same core SPICE engine with ProPlus’ BSIMProPlus, the device modeling software used by all leading foundries, it has built-in foundry-validated accuracy and compatibility. It has full SPICE analysis features and supports industry-standard inputs and outputs.

NanoSpice runs 10 to more than 100 times faster than traditional SPICE simulators. It is able to handle all circuit types, with an ability to simulate large-scale circuits of 50-million or more elements for generic circuit types, and 100-million or more elements for memory circuits.

It is ideally suited for applications such as memory, analog/mixed-signal, I/O, custom digital and standard cell design. NanoSpice handles challenging designs, including the characterization of large embedded SRAM blocks, post-layout analysis of analog circuits, sign-off simulation of full-chip power integrated circuit (IC) or wireless transceiver circuits, and accurate clock tree and critical path analysis.

For example, NanoSpice was used to simulate a multi-million element, post-layout analog/digital converter (ADC) circuit in less than two days with pure SPICE-comparable accuracy measured in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Other parallel SPICE simulators took several weeks to complete this task.

Developed to enable giga-scale simulation and for handling process variations from 3-sigma to high-sigma Monte Carlo simulations with full matrix solving and without approximations in model calculations, NanoSpice uses effective model-handling and high-performance parallelization technology with high memory efficiency. In a recent evaluation, NanoSpice ran sign-off simulation on a 576-million element, full-chip memory circuit in eight hours using eight threads with 15 gigabytes of memory consumption.

NanoSpice is tightly integrated with ProPlus’ DFY platform NanoYield for variation analysis with efficient process, voltage and temperature (PVT) corner sampling, fast Monte Carlo or silicon-proven, high-sigma sampling with technology licensed from IBM.

When a large number of simulations are required, NanoYield enables near-linear scaling over multiple CPUs on a server or distributed computer farm, delivered through a cost-effective parallelization license model. The tight integration between NanoSpice and NanoYield can accelerate variation analysis to achieve the optimum yield versus power, performance and area trade-off by more than 20 times over using NanoYield with an external simulator.

NanoSpice, tightly integrated with ProPlus’ design-for-yield (DFY) platform NanoYield,

can be used to perform variation analysis, as shown here.

Nitronex, a designer and manufacturer of gallium nitride (GaN) based RF solutions for high performance applications, has named David W. Runton as its new Vice President of Engineering. Runton has almost 20 years of RF power semiconductor experience with six years in GaN specific product development, including design, assembly, qualification and packaging.

“I’m looking forward to working with the engineering team to develop many new successful GaN products. Nitronex has very compelling technology that I feel has advantages for numerous market applications,” said Runton. “I am joining Nitronex at an exciting time with a new owner, management team, and significant growth plans for the future.”

Runton most recently served as director of High Power Engineering for RFMD, where he led an engineering product release team and developed long term product strategy. He has also held engineering leadership positions at Freescale and Motorola Semiconductor.

“David is an excellent addition to our management team and I’m confident he will help us leverage our core technology in the RF power market. He has an extensive background developing LDMOS and GaN power devices and a proven track record leading engineering teams to develop new products and technologies,” said Greg Baker, President and CEO.

Runton holds both a Bachelor Degree and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology as well as a Masters in Business Administration, High Technology Program from Arizona State University.