Scaling the Quantum Chokepoint: Garrison Joins Lawrence Semi

TEMPE, AZ – September 17, 2026 — On paper, the career math looks inverted. Don Garrison has spent the last two decades commanding vast semiconductor manufacturing empires. As Vice President of Global Operations for Littelfuse’s Semiconductor Business Unit, he directed an organization of more than 2,500 people across eight fabrication, assembly, and test sites spanning the globe. Before that, he was a Director of Fab Operations at NXP in Chandler, Arizona, and cut his teeth driving manufacturing excellence at GlobalFoundries and Intel.

Yet today, Garrison steps into the role of General Manager and Chief Operating Officer at Lawrence Semiconductor, a privately held merchant epitaxy foundry operating a single Class 100 cleanroom with 14 reactors in Tempe.

Why does a megafab veteran pivot to a boutique operation? The answer lies not in the square footage of the facility, but in the strategic gravity of the materials it produces. Lawrence Semiconductor is currently the only merchant source in the United States capable of producing production-scale Germanium-Tin (GeSn) and isotopically enriched silicon-28 epitaxy. By bringing Garrison aboard, Chief Executive Officer Ali Torabi is signaling a decisive transition: the company is graduating from a niche laboratory service provider into an industrial-scale, high-volume merchant foundry essential to U.S. economic and national security.

From Boutique Lab to Industrial Powerhouse

Epitaxy—the process of depositing perfectly ordered crystalline layers on a semiconductor substrate—is notoriously volatile. It requires managing chemical vapor boundary layers, thermal cross-wafer uniformity sensitive to a single degree Celsius, and precursor gas purities measured in parts per billion. Most senior foundry executives rise through lithography or etch; very few possess direct, hands-on epitaxial domain expertise.

Garrison is the rare exception.

"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," Garrison noted in the company's announcement. "My job is to scale the operation to meet demand without compromising the quality and reliability our customers depend on."

This mandate to scale is critical. Under Torabi’s leadership, the Tempe manufacturer has been aggressively positioning itself to capture demand from the photonics, sensing, and quantum computing sectors. Torabi understands that securing multi-million-dollar defense and automotive contracts requires more than just scientific capability; it requires rigorous statistical process control, high equipment uptime, and relentless yield management.

"Lawrence makes advanced materials that very few companies in the world can produce, and our customers build their most demanding devices on them," Torabi stated. "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."

To support this transition, the facility has already begun integrating automated metrology, pairing Nikon NWL 200 automated wafer handling systems with advanced upright inspection microscopes to achieve 100 percent optical wafer surface inspection. Garrison’s arrival will likely accelerate this industrialization, ensuring the continuous 24/7 operation of their ASM Epsilon CVD reactor fleet operates with the ruthless efficiency of a Tier-1 logic fab.

The Silicon-28 Chokepoint

The most pressing strategic driver behind this operational scale-up is the race for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Advanced silicon spin qubit architectures—championed by major tech conglomerates and national laboratories alike—rely on a fundamental material breakthrough: isotopically enriched silicon-28.

Natural silicon contains about 4.7 percent of the silicon-29 isotope, which carries a nuclear spin. In a quantum processor, these spinning nuclei act like microscopic magnets, creating magnetic noise that destroys the phase coherence of electron spin qubits in mere microseconds. By utilizing silicon enriched to over 99.99 percent silicon-28, the substrate becomes a "semiconductor vacuum," extending qubit coherence times to milliseconds or even seconds.

Historically, the precursor gases required to grow these pristine silicon-28 layers were sourced almost entirely from Russian centrifuge cascades inherited from the Soviet era. In the wake of geopolitical decoupling, Western quantum developers have scrambled to secure domestic enrichment sources. However, having the enriched gas is only half the battle; the U.S. supply chain requires an expert merchant epitaxial foundry to convert those rare precursors into device-ready wafers.

Lawrence occupies this exact chokepoint. As the sole domestic commercial merchant foundry equipped to run production silicon-28 epitaxy campaigns, the company's ability to scale is a matter of national technological sovereignty. Garrison’s implementation of large-scale manufacturing discipline will be the linchpin in transforming these exotic quantum substrates from expensive research novelties into reliable, commercially available commodities.

Mid-Infrared Defense and the GeSn Advantage

Beyond quantum computing, the Tempe facility is quietly anchoring another critical defense supply chain: mid-wave infrared (MWIR) photonics.

Traditionally, advanced infrared sensors, night-vision focal plane arrays, and LiDAR systems rely on expensive compound semiconductor materials like Indium Gallium Arsenide (InGaAs) or Mercury-Cadmium-Telluride (MCT). These require exotic fabrication environments and complex hybrid bonding to silicon read-out integrated circuits.

Lawrence has mastered the non-equilibrium, low-temperature chemical vapor deposition required to alloy germanium with tin. By pushing the tin composition above 8 to 10 percent, Germanium-Tin (GeSn) becomes a direct bandgap material. This allows defense contractors to build highly sensitive MWIR lasers and detectors directly on standard silicon platforms, enabling monolithic CMOS integration at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.

The Department of Defense has clearly recognized this capability. Earlier this year, the company secured a Phase I SBIR contract from the Department of the Army to develop emerging materials for cryogenic optical modulation. Furthermore, the foundry maintains active certification under the DoD Joint Certification Program, allowing it to handle militarily critical technical data and export-controlled designs.

Scaling this defense-critical production requires an operational leader who understands the rigid compliance frameworks of government procurement. Garrison’s background in global operations makes him ideally suited to guide the firm as it transitions its ISO 9001:2015 quality systems to the even more demanding IATF 16949 standards required for high-reliability automotive and aerospace components.

The Arizona Ecosystem Beyond the Megafabs

When policymakers discuss the CHIPS and Science Act or the Arizona semiconductor renaissance, the conversation inevitably drifts toward the megafabs—TSMC’s sprawling desert complex in north Phoenix or Intel’s multi-billion-dollar expansions in Chandler. Yet, the true resilience of a localized semiconductor ecosystem depends heavily on the secondary tier of specialized material foundries and substrate engineers.

Giant silicon wafer vendors deal in millions of standard 300-millimeter substrates; they simply cannot accommodate the low-volume, highly customized, exotic precursor runs required for bleeding-edge quantum and photonic research. Conversely, compound semiconductor foundries focus on gallium nitride or indium phosphide, lacking the specialized Group IV direct-bandgap expertise that Lawrence has honed over three decades.

By operating a fleet of 200-millimeter capable reactors, the Tempe foundry bridges a crucial gap. It allows disruptive startups and defense primes to utilize standard silicon fabrication equipment without the prohibitive tooling expenses associated with 300-millimeter pilot lines. The company even leases dedicated capacity to local semiconductor IP firms, embedding itself deeply into the regional innovation fabric.

With Torabi navigating the strategic partnerships and government relations—including a recent statewide semiconductor research and workforce development accord—Garrison is now free to focus entirely on execution. His appointment is a textbook example of a company recognizing the exact moment it must evolve. The science has been proven; the geopolitical demand is locked in. Now, the mandate is pure execution, turning one of the industry's most unforgiving processes into a predictable, high-yield engine for the bottom line.