Company: American Xtal Technology Inc
City: Fremont
Country: USA
url: http://www.axt.com
We design, develop, manufacture and distribute high-performance compound semiconductor substrates. Our substrate products are used primarily in lighting display applications, wireless communications and fiber optic communications. We believe our proprietary vertical gradient freeze, or VGF technology for manufacturing compound semiconductor substrates provides significant benefits over traditional methods and has enabled us to become a leading manufacturer of compound semiconductor substrates. We pioneered the commercial use of VGF technology to manufacture gallium arsenide, or GaAs, substrates and have used VGF technology to manufacture substrates from other materials, including indium phosphide, or InP, and germanium, or Ge.
Customers for our substrates include EMCORE, United Epitaxy, OSRAM, Kopin and Motorola. Since 1999, we have transferred most of our substrate production capacity to China.
The semiconductor industry is experiencing rapid technological changes. These changes are driven primarily by increased transmission and storage of voice, video and data over communications networks and the Internet. This growth has generated increased demand for devices to send, receive and display information, as well as new wireless and wireline networks used to transmit information. This increased demand has created a growing need for power efficient, high-performance electronic systems that operate at very high frequencies and can be produced cost-effectively in high volumes. To address these demands, semiconductor device manufacturers are increasingly using compound semiconductor substrates, such as GaAs and InP, to improve the performance of semiconductor devices and to enable new applications.
