Kymata Acquires Livingston Facility Scotland

-- Semiconductor International, 8/1/1999

Kymata Ltd. (Starlaw Park, Livingston, Scotland) has acquired a new 35,000-ft² facility in Livingston, Scotland, to establish its wafer fabrication process. The facility was built for Motorola, but was never used. It will enable Kymata to start volume production by January. Design samples are now being produced by Kymata at the fabs of two of its investors, British Telecom and the University of Glasgow.

The only important addition required for the building will be cleanroom space to host the company's planar silica-on-silicon production process that uses 150 mm wafers. This process will employ a unique flame hydrolysis deposition method designed to use as much conventional wafer processing as possible to reduce initial production costs. Kymata will install one of the highest volume optoelectronic IC production lines in the world for wavelength division multiplexing devices, including a 16-channel multiplexer-demultiplexer with 100 GHz channel spacing, a variable optical attenuator and thermo-optic switches.