20 September 2002 -- Bookham Technology , Oxford, UK, is launching a portfolio of GaAs MMICs and foundry services at the European Microwave Week 2002, to be held during 24-26 September in Milan, Italy.
The first new product from the company's increased investment will be a 5W GaAs X-band power amplifier, due to sample in Q4 2002. The amplifier will complement the company's existing X-band Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) and driver products.
Bookham is building its presence in the GaAs MMIC market by developing its facilities at Caswell, UK, acquired from Marconi Corporation in February 2002. The Caswell foundry has the longest continuous history of GaAs development in the world - since 1962.
"GaAs foundry services are at the forefront of our expansion," says Ray Taylor, Business Manager, RF MMICS & Foundry Products, at Bookham Technology. "This is a good time for Bookham Technology to raise its profile in RF MMICs as both the military and space markets are fairly buoyant at the moment. There are lots of satellites in the pipeline for both military and commercial applications."
"We are picking up a lot of enquiries for foundry services ? from people who have their own designs that we are asked to process, through to people who supply their product requirements and we do all the design and process work."
The F20 MESFET process utilises 0.5µm gate-length devices for use up to 20GHz; both the gain and switch processes have been European Space Agency (ESA) space qualified. The H40 and H40P processes use 0.2µm gate-length low-noise pHEMT technology for devices operating to over 40GHz; the H40P process is a high-power variant, with a breakdown voltage of over 15V.
New investment in the foundry is now moving the GaAs MMIC line from 3in to 6in wafers to drive down the cost of the chips. A new 0.17µm mHEMT process is being developed for applications at even higher frequencies of up to 100GHz.
The company has already doubled its international representation since the beginning of the year, and expects to be present in over 20 national markets, including most of Europe, the USA, India, Japan and South Korea by December.
Visitors to Bookham Technology's stand at EMW 2002 will see information on a wide range of standard GaAs MMIC products operating up to 42GHz, including amplifiers, attenuators, phase switches and switches.
Also at the Milan show, an invited paper will be presented at the technical conference, by Dr Steve Marsh, entitled "GaAs ? Enabling Low Cost Integration", this will detail, how Bookham Technology, using Caswell's long history and expertise in GaAs, are developing cost disruptive products for the Optical Telecommunications market.
For more information about the show, visit www.eumw.com