GaAs Industry in Europe - Technologies, Trends and New Developments

Driven by the wireless handset market the GaAs industry has seen an immense growth in recent years. The wireless markets will continue to grow. In addition an emerging mmW market with applications in automotive, defense and optoelectronics will further drive the demand for GaAs components. The two biggest European GaAs foundries, Filtronic and UMS, are very well positioned to address globally the high volume low cost and the higher margin and more specialized niche markets. An overview of the process and design capabilities and new product developments of both companies is provided. INTRODUCTION The world-market for GaAs components is predicted to grow steadily for the next five years reaching $ 4.5b in 2010. The key drivers are the cellular handset and WLAN market characterized by low cost and very high volumes, next to the growing optoelectronic and mmW markets with higher margins but reduced volumes. Figure 1 shows the overall growth in GaAs devices forecasted recently by Strategy Analytics. The European GaAs industry is very well prepared to address the high volume markets and also the more niche mmW markets that continuously are growing. The two biggest and dominant GaAs manufacturing companies in Europe are Filtronic and UMS. Their achievements, product portfolio and strategic positioning are discussed in the following paragraphs. Figure 1. Global GaAs device market FILTRONIC Filtronic Compound Semiconductor Ltd. (FCSL) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Filtronic plc and operates from the Newton Aycliffe facility in the North East of England. The factory comprises a total of 310.000 square feet of which 100.000 square feet are clean room space capable of Class 10 air quality. Their highly automated GaAs manufacturing line is based 0.5μm and 0.25μm stepper lithography on 6” wafers. The supply of EPI substrates is secured by two in-house GEN2000 MBE tools and several external qualified suppliers. The business supports several pHEMT processes optimized for specific applications. FCSL is the biggest and the only 6” GaAs wafer fabrication site in Europe. The worldwide market for wireless devices has been growing at an unprecedented rate. Within this year more than 1billion new handsets will be sold. The convergence of multiple services and functions into a single portable radio demands highly complex switches. Even though the complexity and functionality is increasing, the average selling price for handset microwave components is eroding year by year. Multithrow pHEMT switches are implemented in the majority of handsets meeting the performance and cost objectives for the required complex transmit/receive and band-select switching functions. FCSL had recognized the switch business opportunity since long and has substantially invested in a high volume low cost pHEMT manufacturing line. Most challenging was the very steep ramp up of switch production volume in the last 24 months (Figure 2). Figure 2. FCSL 6” GaAs wafer throughput 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000