Lawrence Semiconductor Appoints Don Garrison COO

Lawrence Semiconductor has appointed Don Garrison as general manager and chief operating officer, bringing more than 25 years of semiconductor manufacturing experience to its Tempe operations. Reporting to chief executive Ali Torabi, Garrison will lead manufacturing, engineering, quality and customer delivery as the company expands capacity for photonics, sensing, quantum computing and defence customers. The U.S.-owned manufacturer operates a Class 100 cleanroom with 14 epitaxial reactors running around the clock. Its materials portfolio includes silicon, germanium, silicon-germanium, germanium-tin and isotopically enriched silicon-28 epitaxial materials.

Operational Leadership Appointment

Garrison joins Lawrence Semiconductor from Littelfuse, where he served as vice president of global operations for the Semiconductor Business Unit. In that role, he directed manufacturing, engineering and supply chain across eight fabrication, assembly and test sites, with an organisation of more than 2,500 people.

His previous roles include director of fab operations at NXP Semiconductors in Chandler, Arizona, manufacturing excellence work at GlobalFoundries during a high-growth factory start-up, and more than a decade in technical and manufacturing roles at Intel Corporation. He has also directly led epitaxial deposition operations at multiple companies.

Ali Torabi, Chief Executive Officer at Lawrence Semiconductor, said:

“Lawrence makes advanced materials that very few companies in the world can produce, and our customers build their most demanding devices on them. Don has run semiconductor manufacturing at far larger scale, and he has run epitaxy, which is rare. With him leading operations, we can invest in capacity with confidence and scale to meet the industry's rapidly growing need for specialty foundry services.”

Specialist Epitaxy Production

As a merchant epitaxy foundry, Lawrence Semiconductor produces engineered layers used by customers as starting material for advanced microelectronic, photonic and sensing devices. The company states that it is the only merchant source in the United States for production GeSn and silicon-28 epitaxy, and one of few suppliers globally.

Lawrence Semiconductor Ali Torabi.

The company’s Tempe facility is ISO 9001:2015 certified and certified under the Department of Defense Joint Certification Program. Lawrence is also implementing IATF 16949 to support automotive and high-reliability production programmes.

Don Garrison, General Manager and Chief Operating Officer at Lawrence Semiconductor, said:

“I have run epitaxy before, and it is one of the most unforgiving processes in semiconductor manufacturing. Lawrence has been doing it well for more than 30 years. My job is to scale the operation to meet demand without compromising the quality and reliability our customers depend on.”

Capacity For Advanced Materials

Founded in 1992, Lawrence Semiconductor supplies custom silicon and germanium epitaxial materials from early research through high-volume production. Its customer base spans silicon photonics, infrared sensing, power electronics, optical interconnect, quantum computing and defence, positioning the company’s operational expansion around a broad set of specialist semiconductor applications.