Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Transphorm Gets $18.5M Contract

Goleta-based Transphorm, which develops high voltage, Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors, has received $18.5M in a contract from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR). According to Transphorm, the Office of Naval Resaerch--part of the U.S. Departmetn of Defense (DoD)--eercised a three year, $15.9M option on an existing $2.6M base contract with the company, which will go to establish a domestic source of Gallium Nitride epiwafers. Those wafers are used in the production of radio frequency and millimeter-wave, plus power electronics applications. Transphorm said the technology being developed is aimed at commercializing something called nitrogen polar (N-Polar) GaN, which was invented at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). That research was conducted by Professor Umesh Mishra, Distinguished Professor at UCSB and Transphorm’s Co-founder, CTO and Chairman.