Axt Inc
AXT, Inc. is a worldwide materials science company that develops and produces
high-performance compound and single element semiconductor substrates, also
known as wafers. Our consolidated subsidiaries produce and sell certain raw
materials some of which are used in our substrate manufacturing process and
some of which are sold to other companies.
Our substrate wafers are used when a typical silicon substrate wafer cannot
meet the performance requirements of a semiconductor or optoelectronic device.
The dominant substrates used in producing semiconductor chips and other electronic
circuits are made from silicon. However, certain chips may become too hot or
perform their function too slowly if silicon is used as the base material. In
addition, optoelectronic applications, such as LED lighting and chip-based lasers,
do not use silicon substrates because they require a wave form frequency that
cannot be achieved using silicon. Alternative or specialty materials are used
to replace silicon as the preferred base in these situations. Our wafers provide
such alternative or specialty materials. We do not design or manufacture the
chips. We add value by researching, developing and producing the specialty material
wafers. We have two product lines: specialty material substrates and raw materials
integral to these substrates. Our compound substrates combine indium with phosphorous
(indium phosphide: InP) or gallium with arsenic (gallium arsenide: GaAs). Our
single element substrates are made from germanium (Ge).
Our raw materials include both raw gallium and purified gallium. We use purified
gallium in producing our GaAs substrates and sell both raw gallium and purified
gallium in the open market to other companies for use in magnetic materials,
high temperature thermometers and growing single crystal ingots including gallium
arsenide, gallium nitride, gallium antimonide, gallium phosphide and other materials
and alloys. We also produce pyrolytic boron nitride (pBN) crucibles used in
the high temperature (typically in the range 500 C to 1,500 C) growth process
of single crystal ingots and epitaxial layer growth in MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy)
reactors.