Semiconductor today

Innovate UK (part of UK Research and Innovation) has issued details of the 16 projects that are to share £11.5m of funding as part of a collaborative R&D drive...

Automotive supplier DENSO Corp of Kariya, Aichi prefecture, Japan and Japan-based power semiconductor device maker ROHM Co Ltd have agreed to begin considering establishing a strategic partnership on semiconductors...

With efficiency and energy sustainability being key drivers of LED selection for industrial and outdoor lighting applications, LED product and lighting maker Lumileds LLC of San Jose, CA, USA says that its new LUXEON 5050 HE Plus can deliver luminous efficacy of 199lm/W and luminous flux of 746lm, as well as reducing application power consumption by 18% or more in critical infrastructure applications common to cities and businesses around the world. Further, the lower energy consumption of the LUXEON 5050 HE Plus supports the transition to low-carbon or no-carbon electricity supply. OEMs can achieve greater sustainability in their manufacturing process by reducing the physical material in both the heatsink and the system’s driver...

At the 2024 International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials (ICSCRM) in Raleigh, NC, USA (29 September-4 October), ASM International N.V. of Almere, the Netherlands, which designs and manufactures semiconductor wafer processing equipment and process solutions, has introduced the dual-chamber PE2O8 silicon carbide (SiC) epitaxy system. Designed to address the needs of the SiC power device segment, the PE2O8 is claimed to be the benchmark epitaxy system for low defectivity and high process uniformity, all with the higher throughput and low cost of ownership needed to enable broader adoption of SiC devices...

LED product and lighting maker Lumileds LLC of San Jose, CA, USA claims to be first to demonstrate that rich deep red light (615nm dominant wavelength corresponding with 635nm peak) can be produced with indium gallium nitride (InGaN) LEDs, achieving a wall-plug efficiency of 7.5% at a current density of 10A/cm2. The firm says that its breakthroughs address the challenges associated with high indium concentrations, including spectral peak shifts and broadening with current density...

LED product and lighting maker Lumileds LLC of San Jose, CA, USA has released its latest LED engineered for deep dimming applications. The new LUXEON 2835 Commercial Deep Dimming LED offers what is claimed to be the industry’s most consistent dimming performance down to 1% dimming. With a Vf range of just 0.05 split into two Vf bins of 0.025, users no longer need to engage in complex binning processes, costly driver compatibility design, or burdensome testing...

Exaktera group firm ProPhotonix Ltd of Salem, NH, USA, a designer and manufacturer of diode-based laser modules and LED systems for OEMs and medical equipment companies (as well as a distributor of laser diodes for Ushio, Osram, QSI, Panasonic and Sony), has launched the COBRA Slim UVC LED Line light. Engineered to enable new applications in machine vision, it is on display in booth 10E59 at Vision 2024 in Stuttgart, Germany (8-10 October)...

Materials, networking and laser technology firm Coherent Corp of Saxonburg, PA, USA (formerly II-VI Inc before it acquired Coherent in July 2022) has sold its semiconductor fabrication plant in Aycliffe Business Park, Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, UK, which was acquired by II‑VI Inc in 2017....

As he opened an industry conference of G7 nations, the UK Government’s Science Minister Lord Patrick Vallance announced the 16 projects that will share £11.5m in funding – provided by Innovate UK (which provides funding and support for business innovation as part of UK Research and Innovation) – that will help drive innovation...

The US Department of Defense (DoD) is directing $31.9m in funding to the California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub (CA DREAMS), led by the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI)...

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film photovoltaic (PV) module maker First Solar Inc of Tempe, AZ, USA has inaugurated its new $1.1bn fully vertically integrated thin-film solar manufacturing facility in Lawrence County, Alabama. The facility, which adds 3.5GW of fully vertically integrated nameplate solar manufacturing capacity in the USA, is expected to create over 800 technology manufacturing jobs in the state...

Independent power electronics company Quantum Power Transformation (QPT) Ltd of Cambridge, UK — which was founded in 2019 and develops gallium nitride (GaN)-based motor drives — has joined INOPOL, the academic business incubator of the Polytechnic of Coimbra (IPC), located near its R&D office in Portugal. The partnership will allow QPT to engage with the local entrepreneurial community, collaborate with talented students, and work alongside academics on innovative research...

For first-half 2024, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) system maker Riber S.A. of Bezons, France has confirmed revenue of €13.7m, up 13% on €12.2m in first-half 2023, despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment...

TRUMPF Photonic Components GmbH of Ulm, Germany (part of the TRUMPF Group) — which makes vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and photodiodes — says that it has improved its proprietary subwavelength surface-grating technology for datacom VCSELs...

With a live demonstration at the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC 2024) in Frankfurt, Germany (23–25 September), Source Photonics Inc of West Hills, CA, USA (which provides communications and data connectivity solutions for hyperscale and AI data centers, metropolitan area networks and access networks) announced product availability of its transceiver portfolio, including 1.6T and 800G optical modules/AOC/DAC based on single-lambda 200G PAM4 technology, the latest 800G 4×200G DR4/FR4/LR4 and 400G/800G optical modules supporting immersion liquid cooling. The firm says that this represents a critical milestone for enabling next-generation 51.2T and 102.4T switch platforms for accelerated AI compute infrastructure...

South Korea-based Seoul Semiconductor Co Ltd and its affiliate Seoul Viosys have won a patent litigation case against Everlight, a Taiwanese LED company ranked sixth globally...

US-based Raytheon (a business of aerospace & defense company RTX) has delivered the first AN/TPY-2 radar for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The AN/TPY-2 is a missile defense radar that can detect, track and discriminate ballistic missiles in multiple phases of flight...

Photonic application-specific integrated circuit (PASIC) chip design and manufacturing company OpenLight of Santa Barbara, CA, USA (which launched as an independent company in June 2022, introducing the first open silicon photonics platform with heterogeneously integrated III-V lasers) has partnered with fabless photonic design house Epiphany, aimed at advancing the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design ecosystem...

UK-based CML Microsystems Plc – a designer and fabless manufacturer of mixed-signal, RF and microwave semiconductors for wireless communications applications – has extended its SµRF range of sub-GHz monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMICs) with a 2W power amplifier optimized for linear performance and high reliability. The CMX90A006 is intended as a final-stage ISM (915MHz)- and SRD (868MHz)-band power amplifier in wireless transmitter applications...

Japan-based Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corp (TDSC) – which was spun off from Toshiba Corp in 2017 – has added the TRSxxx120Hx Series of 1200V products to its lineup of third-generation silicon carbide (SiC) Schottky barrier diodes (SBD) for industrial equipment, such as photovoltaic inverters, EV charging stations, and switching power supplies for industrial equipment. Toshiba has started shipments of the ten new products in the series: five in a TO-247-2L package and five in a TO-247 package...