News: Suppliers
31 March 2020
AXT GaAs substrate customer qualifies new wafer processing facilities
AXT Inc of Fremont, CA, USA – which makes gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium phosphide (InP) and germanium (Ge) substrates and raw materials – says that one of its largest GaAs wafer substrate customers has formally qualified its new GaAs wafer processing facilities.
“Among the customers now qualified on the new gallium arsenide manufacturing line, we are pleased to announce that one of our largest gallium arsenide customers has qualified our new manufacturing sites for volume production,” says CEO Morris Young. “This Tier-1 customer has among the highest quality, safety and environmental standards in its industry,” he adds. “Its confirmation is an important milestone for AXT’s manufacturing relocation, and will enable us to meaningfully ramp production from our new locations to meet our customers’ needs over the coming quarters.”
AXT began manufacturing its GaAs substrate wafers in the Tongzhou district of Beijing, China in 2000. In 2015, the Beijing city government selected Tongzhou for its new municipal headquarters. Along with many other businesses asked to relocate their manufacturing lines in order to create room and upgrade the district, AXT was instructed to relocate its GaAs manufacturing line.
Hence, during fourth-quarter 2019, AXT transferred its GaAs crystal growth ingot production to its new manufacturing facility in Kazuo, a city about 250 miles from Beijing. Wafer processing for GaAs was relocated to its new manufacturing facility in Dingxing, a city about 75 miles from Beijing. AXT began offering wafers from Dingxing for customer qualification in 2019, and began customer site qualifications later in the year.
“Our new manufacturing sites are optimized for best-practice manufacturing techniques, and we have installed state-of-the-art equipment. Both are designed to meet and exceed the current rigorous safety and environmental standards in China,” says Young. “We now have capacity in place to meet today’s demand for a wide variety of high-end applications, with ample space to expand as demand increases and new applications come to market,” he adds. “I am proud of the teamwork and dedication of our entire AXT team, making this significant accomplishment possible. We are now well positioned to push our technology to new levels of performance required by current emerging applications, and to engage the marketplace with confidence and enthusiasm.”
