- 28 March 2006 -

Kyma signs agreement with US Navy

Kyma Technologies Inc, Raleigh, USA, has signed a Cooperative Research And Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to investigate the potential for low defect density native GaN substrates to enable improvements in the performance and reliability of high power RF transistors based on conventional GaN field effect transistor (FET) designs and on novel FET designs.

The NRL program managers for the CRADA are Dr. Steve Binari and Dr. David Storm. Dr. Drew Hanser, Kyma’s co-founder, assumes the role of Kyma’s technical lead.

Dr. Hanser said: “Our existing collaboration with NRL has produced encouraging early materials and device results, showing excellent epitaxial growth and very good device performance up into the X-band. We look forward to working closely with the NRL team to develop FETs that have both the performance and the reliability required for use in advanced military systems.”

According to Kyma, GaN FETs have the potential to provide key benefits to military systems and eventually to the commercial wireless sector. Most GaN FETs under development today utilize non-native substrates such as SiC, benefiting from the greater availability of such substrates. However, reliance on non-native substrates presents great challenges in terms of device layer quality which may limit FET performance and reliability. Native substrates, once available, should help overcome such challenges, the company added.

Web: http://www.kymatech.com