Semiconductor today

Lumileds of Amsterdam, The Netherlands says that its new LUXEON HL1Z Color Line is a high-power, chip-scale package (CSP) portfolio of 10 direct and phosphor-converted colors that share a common focal length and footprint. Offered in small color bins and with narrow forward-voltage bins, the LEDs are said to deliver better color uniformity, better efficacy and thermal management and more consistent behavior at operating conditions...

Compound Semiconductor Applications (CSA) Catapult has appointed Caroline O’Brien as its new chief executive officer, joining in late September...

After the introduction of its first-generation (Gen 1) D3GaN 650V devices, followed by Gen 1+, and now second-generation (Gen 2) products, VisIC Technologies Ltd of Ness Ziona, Israel – a fabless supplier of power conversion devices based on gallium nitride (GaN) transistors – says that it has created a roadmap for achieving maximum energy efficiency through optimized RDS(ON) performance...

Lumentum Holdings Inc of San Jose, CA, USA (which designs and makes optical and photonic products for optical networks and lasers for industrial and consumer markets) has announced the pricing of $1.1bn worth of convertible senior notes (due 2032) in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers (pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended). The firm has also granted the initial purchasers a 13-day option to purchase up to an additional $165m of the notes...

To support the commercialization of its micro-LED platform, Mojo Vision Inc of Saratoga, CA, USA has closed its $75m Series B Prime investment round, which was led by Vanedge Capital, joined by existing shareholders including Edge Vrenture Capital, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Fusion Fund, Knollwood Capital, Dolby Family Ventures, and Khosla Ventures, plus new shareholders including imec.xpand, Keymaker, Ohio Innovation Fund, and Hyperlink Ventures...

As part of their strategic partnership (initiated in 2020), Japan’s ROHM Co Ltd and Germany-based automotive supplier Schaeffler (formerly Vitesco Technologies) have started mass production of a new high-voltage inverter brick incorporating ROHM’s fourth-generation silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET bare chips. The inverter brick is intended for a major Chinese car manufacturer...

Silanna UV of Brisbane, Australia – which provides far-UVC light sources for water quality sensors, gas sensors, disinfection, and HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography) applications – has released its SF2-3T9B5L1-TB next-generation far-UVC LED, which surpasses the SF1 series, with UVC wavelengths down to 230nm (typical 233nm), together with a doubling in output power and a 2x improvement in temperature stability. The new SF2 UVC LED is encapsulated in a standard compact transistor outline (TO-can) package...

Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Electric Corp has been selected as a representative organization for the technology development ‘Development of Domestic Solar Cells, Cover Glass, and Solar Arrays’ under the ‘Development/Verification of Parts/Components for the Establishment of Satellite Supply Chain’, which is one of the technology development themes included in the 1st Phase of the Space Strategy Fund operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Mitsubishi Electric has signed a contract with JAXA covering this development...

Lumentum Holdings Inc of San Jose, CA, USA (which designs and makes optical and photonic products for optical networks and lasers for industrial and consumer markets) intends to offer (subject to market conditions and other factors) $1.1bn worth of convertible senior notes (due in 2032) in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers (pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended). Lumentum also expects to grant the initial purchasers a 13-day option to purchase up to an additional $165m of the notes...

Mining exploration company Nimy Resources Ltd of Perth, Western Australia has appointed Tony Tang as technical advisor – Extractive Metallurgy. He will lead the metallurgical test work and flow sheet development for the economic extraction of gallium from the Block 3 gallium resource at the Mons Project in Western Australia, including the development of an intermediate gallium product to support strategic objectives in critical minerals...

In late September, Japan-based KIOXIA Iwate Corp will begin evaluating a gallium nitride (GaN)-based electron-beam technology developed through joint research between Nagoya University spinoff Photo electron Soul Inc (PeS) and the Amano–Honda Laboratory at Nagoya University...

Metallium Ltd of Subiaco, Western Australia says that its US subsidiary Flash Metals USA Inc off Houston, TX, USA has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract by the US Department of Defense (DoD) through the Defense Logistics Agency. Valued at AUS$100,000, the award will apply Metallium’s proprietary Flash Joule Heating (FJH) process to recover gallium from waste streams, including LED scrap and gallium-rich waste streams. These feedstocks also contain germanium and other valuable metals, broadening the project’s strategic impact. The work is expected to be completed within six months...

Analog/mixed-signal and specialty foundry X-FAB Silicon Foundries SE of Tessenderlo, Belgium is building on its expertise in gallium nitride (GaN) processing technology for high-power applications by introducing GaN-on-silicon foundry services for dMode devices as part of its XG035 technology platform. The move further leverages X-FAB’s capabilities as a pure-play foundry that now offers a set of processing technologies for GaN and other wide-bandgap (WBG) materials – including silicon carbide (SiC) – to help fabless semiconductor companies...

Gallium oxide (Ga2O3) can make electronic devices much more energy efficient than existing silicon-based technology. For electronic diodes, researchers have been able to reliably produce n-type gallium oxide layers but struggled to create stable p-type layers because gallium oxide's crystal structure naturally resists the atoms needed for these layers. This limitation resulted in gallium oxide semiconductors with poor performance and reliability issues...

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Engineering Centers Building on 5 August hosted the grand opening of the Ultra-Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) Laboratory, attended by university and national R&D leaders including UW-Madison’s vice chancellor for research Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska; College of Engineering Dean Devesh Ranjan; and Vivek Prasad, VP for design engineering ecosystem enablement at NatCast (a nonprofit that operates the National Semiconductor Technology Center). They joined Susan Hagness, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and ECE assistant professor Shubhra Pasayat, who oversees the new facility as the lab’s principal investigator...

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Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corp of Kawasaki, Japan has launched three 650V silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs equipped with its latest third-generation SiC MOSFET chips and housed in general-purpose surface-mount TOLL packages...

SweGaN AB of Linköping, Sweden — a manufacturer of custom gallium nitride on silicon carbide (GaN-on-SiC) epitaxial wafers, based on proprietary growth technology — is coordinator of the project ‘GaN6G+: Unlocking Performance and Efficiency in Future 6G Power Amplifiers’, partnered by communications network provider Ericsson, defense and security company Saab and Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Funded by Swedish innovation agency Vinnova and lasting from September 2025 to August 2027, the project aims to revolutionize GaN-based power amplifier (PA) technology for next-generation 6G networks...

South Korean LED maker Seoul Semiconductor Co Ltd says that the Supreme Court of Korea has recently upheld a lower court ruling convicting Taiwan-based LED maker Everlight Electronics Co Ltd of violating the Act on Prevention and Protection of Industrial Technology for misappropriating Seoul Semiconductor’s patented LED technology....

Specialty analog foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd of Migdal Haemek, Israel and Xscape Photonics Inc of Fort Lee, NJ and Santa Clara, CA, USA (which is funded by industry leaders such as NVIDIA and Cisco, and develops silicon photonics interconnects for AI data centers) have announced the successful prototyping and validation kit availability of what is claimed to be the industry’s first on-chip, optically pumped, multi-wavelength laser source. Built on Tower’s mature, high-volume PH18 silicon photonics platform, the solution supports CWDM and DWDM wavelength grids and is tailored for AI data-center fabrics, where bandwidth density, power efficiency and scalability are essential...