Raytheon and Globalfoundries announce 5G GaN collaboration

Raytheon Technologies and Globalfoundries (GF) are to collaborate in developing and commercialising a new gallium nitride on silicon (GaN-on-Si) Semiconductor.

According to the two companies this new semiconductor will deliver ‘game-changing’ radio frequency performance for 5G and 6G applications.

Raytheon Technologies will license its proprietary gallium nitride on silicon technology and technical expertise to GF, which will develop the new semiconductor at its Fab 9 facility in Burlington, Vermont.

Gallium nitride is a unique material used to build high-performance semiconductors that can manage significant heat and power levels making them suitable in handling 5G and 6G wireless signals, which require higher performance levels than legacy wireless systems.

Combined with GF’s manufacturing and service capabilities in RF, testing, and packaging, the new GaN offering will increase RF performance while maintaining production and operational costs and will, according to Globalfoundries, enable customers to achieve new levels of power and power-added efficiency to meet evolving 5G and 6G RF mm-wave operating frequency standards.

This collaboration is the latest of several strategic partnerships announced by GF and is being seen as another example of the company’s efforts to deliver differentiated solutions at a time when the rest of the industry is pursuing more traditional and increasingly difficult technology scaling.