GlobalFoundries and Finwave Semiconductor Inc. have formed a foundry agreement for gallium nitride (GaN) development and licensing.
Under the deal, Finwave’s GaN on silicon technology will be merged with GF’s high volume manufacturing capabilities and radio frequency (RF) technology such as its RF silicon-on-insulator and silicon-germanium foundry services. The deal will include focusing on optimizing and scaling Finwave’s metal-insulator-semiconductor high-electron-mobility transistor (MISHEMT) technology to volume production on GF’s 200 mm semiconductor manufacturing facility in Burlington, Vermont.
The collaboration will allow users to build efficient power amplifiers in applications where traditional gallium arsenide and silicon are not enough. This includes:
- High frequency 5G FR2/FR3 bands
- 6G
- Millimeter wave (mmWave) amplifiers
- Wi-Fi 7 systems
“This partnership opens the door to further innovation and integration of RF Front ends onto a single GaN-on-Si device,” said Pierre Yves Lesaicherre, CEO at Finwave Semiconductor. “This has never been done before, and has the potential to reduce cost and size, both of which are at a premium in cellphones.”
What is MISHEMT technology?
The E-mode GaN MISHEMT technology was developed in support of federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) as well as private investments.
The etch-stop technology allows for enhanced RF performance, low contact resistance for envelop-tracking operation below 5V for handset RFFE and has channel scalability for mmWave frequencies and beyond.
The GF and Finwave collaboration aim to be in mass production at foundries in the first half of 2026.
Why it matters
Wide bandgap technologies are growing significantly due to their expanded use in power electronics as well as applications like electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy sources like solar and wind.
For the past two years, semiconductor vendors that are developing GaN, SiC and other wide bandgap technologies have been rapidly expanding their future semiconductor manufacturing capacity in anticipation that these markets are only going to continue to grow. As a result, the wide bandgap market has seen considerable investments from all the major players to ensure future capacity or provide future capacity for use by automotive OEMs and energy companies.
GlobalFoundries has followed suit as it has actively worked to expand its wide bandgap portfolio including acquiring Tagore Technology’s GaN IP products back in July. This along with the Finwave collaboration will help with its manufacturing of power semiconductors for the aerospace and defense industry in the U.S.
