Raytheon Awarded Additional Gallium Nitride Production Process Development Funds

Raytheon has secured a $14.9 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and Office of the Secretary of Defense to further develop the production process of gallium nitride-based semiconductors.

The company said Wednesday it will work to update the performance, supply and the dependability of wideband, monolithic, microwave-integrated circuits and circulator equipment made from GaN.

This award comes nearly a month after Missile Defense Agency gave Raytheon a contract modification to create a transition-to-production process that will work to implement gallium nitride material on present and future AN/TPY-2 radars in an effort to modernize ballistic missile defense radars.

“This contract will build on the 17-year, two-hundred-plus million-dollar investment Raytheon has made in maturing GaN,” said Colin Whelan, advanced technology vice president at Raytheon’s integrated defense systems division.

He added that the company aims to further develop its GaN operations to support radio frequency performance, yield and reliability over the next two years.

GaN is a semiconductor material designed to boost high power radio signals at microwave frequencies for military radars and defense systems such as the U.S. Navy‘s Air and Missile Defense Radar and Next Generation Jammer.

The technology is set to be produced as part of Raytheon’s Next Generation Jammer program in 2018.