GEC Marconi Materials Technology says it is hoping to attract outside foundary contracts for its newly opened Gallium Arsenide fab at Caswell, near Towcester in Northamptonshire (CI No 2,096) – the only one of its kind in the UK. The facility, formerly owned by Plessey, houses some 350 personnel and UKP10 to UKP12m of equipment, drawn both from Plessey and from GEC’s Hirst Research Centre. It can provide a complete computer-aided design and foundary service or, alternatively, can produce and package ASIC designs provided by customers. Production will focus on three inch wafers fabricated to 0.5 micron design rules. These are produced in batches of four, with each wafer costing up to UKP5,000 to process. Four and five inch wafers, and finer design rules, are promised in future however as technology – and demand – develops. Throughput at the moment is around 2,500 wafers per annum – though a few key pieces of new machinery could boost this to around 10,000. As well as servicing outside contracts, Caswell will support a number of key activities within the GEC Marconi businesses, including work on high frequency transmit-receive semiconductors for the airborne radar being co-developed by GEC Marconi Avionics and Thomson-CSF SA; a chip set for K-band phased radar for GEC-Marconi Dynamics; broad band, low noise receiver chip for Marconi Defence Systems; and chips for radar projects being carried out by Matra Marconi Space and Marconi Radar and Control Systems. The company intends to concentrate on monolithic microwave ASICs as used in Plessey’s new wireless local network (CI No 2,090) and a new Search and Rescue Transmitter chip, or SART, being developed for the rescue services. The chip is intended for transmitters to be attached to small vessels and life jackets. The transmitters will help locate victims by sending send out beacon signals. Caswell has been ‘virtually synonymous’ with Gallium Arsenide development in the UK since the mid-1960s, according to GEC. Research here into the use of chemical deposition and molecular beams to produce Gallium Arsenide devices led to the announcement of a Field Effect Transistor in 1966 for example. And a Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit followed in 1976. Two inch Gallium Arsenide wafers were also processed on the site from 1985. Such a background, the company says, makes Caswell equal in terms of its technological expertise to similar US and Japanese manufacturers. It is also placed in hot competition with European counterparts SGS Thomson Microelectronics NV and Philips Electronics NV in France, Siemens AG in Germany and Alcatel Telettra SpA in Italy.
