News

13 August 2008

 

IQE Silicon adds two new processes

Substrate and epiwafer supplier IQE plc says that its IQE Silicon operation in Cardiff, Wales, UK has added to its portfolio of manufacturing processes with two major new technologies, developed with funding assistance from the Welsh Assembly Government (in line with their SMART development programmes).

The new process technologies are aimed at improving the speed and power consumption of silicon chips by using materials such as strained silicon and sapphire for future generations of high-speed applications, including the RF wireless and broadband markets. The radiation-hard attributes of the materials also lend themselves to aerospace applications. Future developments could also see the products being used as advanced microcontrollers for industrial, consumer and automotive devices, says IQE.

“One of these new processes has already been fully qualified with a key customer and will go into production immediately,” says IQE Silicon’s operations manager Moz Fisher. “The second process requires some significant product re-engineering by the customer, which will extend the qualification period but is expected to be in volume production in the next two years.”

IQE’s silicon epitaxy operation was established in Cardiff in 2000. The facility manufactures silicon-based products including buried layer epitaxy, strained silicon on SOI (silicon-on-insulator) and sapphire, multilayer and selective epitaxy as well as germanium and SiGe epitaxy. IQE says that the business supports the new era of ‘asset-lite’ wafer fabs by enabling customers to increase production capacity as required, allowing them to quickly respond to increased demand for their products by acting as an extension of their own in-house capabilities.

See related item:

IQE extends range of InGaAs SWIR detector products

SI GaAs epi market to grow 7% in 2008 then 10% in 2009

IQE grows 26% year-on-year in Q1/2008

Search: IQE Strained silicon Sapphire SOI SiGe

Visit: www.iqep.com