After recently upgrading to a new facility, and acquiring Ion Beam Milling, SemiGen Inc, is now set to help RF companies improve their supply chains and bottom lines with an impressive array of on-demand products and services. The company has now optimized its product delivery process for manufacturers to tell them when they can efficiently leverage their own team member’s expertise in concert with their key outside partners.
Optimally, internal engineering experts are putting their skills to work where they can be most valuable—designing and producing prototypes and developing design for manufacturability (DFM) protocols. But all too often one can find them doubling as test engineers and assembly technicians, stealing valuable time and energy from more valuable work. This is counterintuitive to the common goal of any well-managed operation, which is to reduce or eliminate all non-essential tasks in the workforce and streamline the time to market for their products.
The key is often making a design/production audit decision before it’s too late. And this is where SemiGen suggests that they are ideally suited to begin assistance. As a proven RF/microwave solutions company—who also carries key products and provides turnkey assembly and testing services—SemiGen provides RF product management teams the opportunity to step back and evaluate what their internal engineering and production teams do best, and with routine. Then, by considering outsourcing of lower volume and perhaps more unique assembly work, such as repairs or repeat low-volume orders, manufacturers can truly capitalize on their core competencies. It stands to reason that a well-thought-out outsourcing plan also reduces equipment and training costs and allows a manufacturer to gain momentum in their product research and development.
SemiGen’s design and manufacturing center includes mixed-signal RF/microwave assembly, box build, module repair and test services coupled with the diodes, semiconductor devices and manufacturing supplies needed for successful production of hybrids and components. Their team helps with designs, builds prototypes, performs high-level testing, and handles production runs for various customers in the RF, military, space, homeland security, optical, medical device, and commercial wireless markets. The company’s 37,000 square foot facility includes a class 10,000 clean room and offers manual to fully automatic assembly.
They also offer processing of 100 to 150 mm silicon wafers, as well as alumina and aluminum nitride substrates up to 4.25 inches. Services provided include any combination of photolithography, wet etch, dry etch, metallization, grinding, and polishing. Recent investments in high frequency testing and hi-reliability (Hi-Rel) environmental testing capabilities enables the company to offer solutions for Hi-Rel screening of amplifiers, FETs, MMICs, transistors, diodes, and other active and passive circuits and components. Tests are performed and are delivered with full documentation in accordance with MIL-PRF-19500, MIL-PRF-38534, and MIL-PRF-38535 requirements. Element evaluation and screening options from Class H, Class K, TX, TXV, S-level, as well as custom SCD driven requirements are available.
Another recent investment by the company was the purchase of Ion Beam Milling of Manchester, NH in October 2018. Ion Beam Milling pioneered several thin film circuit processing techniques using innovative ion beam milling approaches. They have serviced the RF and microwave industry for over 35 years with thin film products and fabrication services which include custom and standard attenuators, filters, heat spreaders, high power resistors, laser diode sub-mounts, Lange couplers, chip inductors, and transmission lines, to name a few. The company has been fully integrated into the SemiGen facility in Londonderry.
