Qorvo awarded US Air Force contract to accelerate GaN design, performance and reliability

Qorvo Inc of Greensboro, NC, USA (which provides core technologies and RF solutions for mobile, infrastructure and defense applications) has been awarded a four-year contract by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to develop and implement a physics-based, unified gallium nitride (GaN) modeling framework to accelerate the design of GaN devices.

As the prime contractor on the Engineering Predictable Behavior into GaN Devices Foundational Engineering Problem (FEP) contract, Qorvo will head a team that includes Modelithics Inc, the University of Padua, NI AWR, HRL and the University of Colorado-Boulder.

GaN’s superior power density and ability to deliver higher output power and efficiency – including at millimeter-wave frequencies – make it the semiconductor technology of choice for radar, electronic warfare (EW) and communication systems for defense and commercial applications, says Qorvo.

The firm, which supplies GaN devices to the US Department of Defense (DoD), will lead a group of industry and university organizations to create a single tool that unifies physics modeling and device modeling to provide powerful predictive capabilities. The tool will allow circuit designers to make performance and reliability trade-offs at the design stage, which is not currently possible.

The new capability should significantly reduce the number of design-build-test iterations, enhance reliability and achieve reductions in cost and delivery times for capabilities critical to the Air Force, DoD and commercial industries.

“This award enables the Air Force to leverage Qorvo’s nearly 20 years of expertise developing the industry’s most reliable, highest-performing GaN process,” says James Klein, president of Qorvo’s Infrastructure and Defense Products business. The new modeling and simulation tool will “accelerate advanced GaN designs for mission-critical applications even as it reduces costs,” he adds.

Delivery of the final, unified modeling framework is expected during 2022.

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