STMicroelectronics and Innoscience sign GaN agreement

The companies have agreed on a joint development initiative on GaN power technology, to advance the promising future of GaN power for consumer electronics, data centres, automotive, and industrial power systems and many more applications in the coming years. In addition, the agreement allows Innoscience to utilise ST’s front-end manufacturing capacity outside China for its GaN wafers, while ST can leverage Innoscience’s front-end manufacturing capacity in China for its own GaN wafers. The common ambition is for each company to expand their individual offering in GaN with supply chain flexibility and resilience to cover all customers’ requirements in a wide range of applications.

Marco Cassis, President, Analog, Power & Discrete, MEMS and Sensors of STMicroelectronics declared: “ST and Innoscience are both Integrated Device Manufacturers, and with this agreement we will leverage this model to the benefit of our customers globally. First, ST will be accelerating its roadmap in GaN power technology to complement its silicon and silicon carbide offering. Second, ST will be able to leverage a flexible manufacturing model to serve customers globally.”

GaN power devices leverage fundamental material properties that enable new standards of system performance in power conversion, motion control, and actuation, offering significantly lower losses, which allows for enhanced efficiency, smaller size, and lighter weight, thus reducing the overall solution cost and carbon footprint; these devices are rapidly being adopted in consumer electronics, data centre and industrial power supplies, and solar inverters, and are being actively designed into next-generation EV powertrains due to their substantial size and weight reduction benefits.