ANDOVER, Mass.—At the front door of Raytheon's Integrated Air Defense Center, there's a reminder of how big microwave electronics used to be—the original microwave oven. The now ever-present kitchen device was invented after a Raytheon engineer discovered his candy bar melted while he was standing near a magnetron used in a radar system the company was developing. Nearly the size of a refrigerator, the original microwave looks like it would cook a whole lot more than whatever was put within its metal grate, which was meant to contain the microwaves from its magnetron.
That isn't a water cooler; it's a pioneering microwave. (credit: Courtesy of Sean Gallagher)
A few hundred yards away from the relic, Raytheon manufactures a much different microwave technology today. In a semiconductor fabrication facility, built to resemble a giant integrated circuit from above, the company produces many of the chips that go into its modern radar systems, including monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). These tiny radio frequency amplifiers are similar to ones found in cellular phones, Wi-Fi adapters, and other wireless communications devices.
This technology is currently in the process of getting a major upgrade as the result of more than 16 years of research by Raytheon. And any MMIC evolution will be driven by the same substance that has made power-sipping LED light bulbs, Blu-ray players, and game consoles possible: gallium nitride (or, in chemical shorthand, GaN).
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