Nitronex Corp. (Raleigh, NC), a privately held manufacturer of gallium nitride (GaN)-based, radio frequency (RF) power transistors, announced that it has been issued US Patent No. 6,617,060 entitled "Gallium Nitride Material and Methods." The patent, issued on September 9, 2003, teaches process technology used for growing GaN semiconductor layers on silicon substrates and includes Nitronex’s SIGANTIC. core platform technology.
Additionally, Nitronex, in collaboration with aviation electronics and communications leader Rockwell Collins, announced the demonstration of a single-unit GaN transistor yielding output power of 120W. Nitronex used the SIGANTIC platform and fabricated the 120W device, employing its baseline process developed for 3G-WCDMA market applications. Rockwell Collins packaged and tested the device. Nitronex’s GaN high electron mobility transistor technology is being evaluated by Rockwell for a variety of pulsed-power applications. The results reported were from a 39mm gate width device pulse tested (pulse width of 11.4µsec at 5% duty cycle) at 2GHz and 28V. At 2dB into compression, the device exhibited a gain of 11.3dB with an efficiency of over 39%.
