Menlo Micro draws closer to fab opening in Tompkins County

LANSING — A California company is getting closer to opening its first U.S.–based fabrication facility near Ithaca, joining the state’s growing semiconductor industry. Menlo Microsystems, Inc. (Menlo Micro), which announced its New York plans in July 2023, is hard at work getting the former Kionix, Inc. facility ready to produce the company’s Ideal Switch electric switch. It was a process finding just the right location, says Lew Boore, Menlo’s head of government affairs and strategic marketing. “We have a very simple process that involves two things — glass and gold,” he says. “Two things fabs don’t like.” The materials can be difficult to work with, Boore explains. Company officials evaluated about 30 fabrication plants across the country before settling on the Kionix site at 36 Thornwood Drive in the town of Lansing in Tompkins County. While its technology was different, everything else about the “Goldilocks fab” was a perfect fit, right down to it being the ideal size to house what Menlo has dubbed its Ideal Fab. Menlo Micro has invested about $26 million in the facility to date as it prepares to open later this year, Boore says. With 15 people on staff already, the company will invest a total of $50 million into the fab over the next several years and has committed to creating about 100 jobs there. “We’ve got a very robust workforce-development program we’ve implemented,” Boore says, as the company plans ahead for filling those positions. “We’ve reached out far and wide in New York and many other places.” The outreach has included numerous colleges such as Tompkins County Community College, Cornell University, and Rochester Institute of Technology — along with organizations such as CenterState CEO and the Vet S.T.E.P. (semiconductor training and experience program) — to find ways to work together to train the future workforce that Menlo Micro and other semiconductor businesses will need. The company will have a variety of roles available and not all will require an advanced degree, Boore notes. “Where the rubber meets the road is technicians, and you don’t need a degree to be a technician.” Creating new jobs for the region is exciting, as is bringing a technology that’s a “little out of the mainstream” to the industry, Chris Giovanniello, Menlo Micro co-founder and senior VP of sales and marketing, says. “We’re really just in the beginning stages of deploying it,” he says of the company’s Ideal Switch. People don’t think much about switches, he says, and he’s not talking about light switches. He’s talking about traditional mechanical relays and the newer semiconductor relays. These relay switches are in everything, Giovanniello notes, from the circuit panel in your house to your car’s ignition system. Mechanical relays have been around since Thomas Edison and have drawbacks, he notes. They are big, they are slow, and they don’t last very long. Semiconductor, or solid state, relays are newer, but also have challenges, according to Giovanniello. They don’t fully conduct electricity, so there is a lot of waste electricity, which generates heat that must be dissipated. Menlo Micro’s solution to both of these switches is its Ideal Switch, a newer type of mechanical switch. “Our individual relay is the size of a human hair,” he says. The switch is small, fast, and doesn’t generate waste heat. Thousands of the Ideal Switch will fit on a single wafer. “We’ve been slowly and steadily building up our credibility,” Giovanniello says. Menlo Micro currently offers seven unique products, with many being sold to applications for test and measurement equipment. The company’s products also have use in radiofrequency applications along with aerospace and defense. “It’s exciting,” Giovanniello says of both the switch and the Ideal Fab. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s exciting.” Headquartered in Irvine, California, Menlo Micro also operates a research and development office at the Albany NanoTech Complex in Albany.