Legacy RF power transistor: Not recommended for new designs

[Antoine]

Hello,

I'm looking for LDMOS power transistor for the 70-174 MHz band, and I see on the NXP website that all the power transistors in the "Legacy RF power" products list are noted "Not recommended for New designs":

https://www.nxp.com/products/radio-frequency/legacy-rf/legacy-rf-power:LEGACY-RF-POWER

The MRF101AN, the MRF300AN or the MRFX1K80H could suit very well to my need, but is it a high risk to use them in a new products ? Does NXP stop the production of such transistors ? Are there some alternatives recommended ?

Thank you for your feedback !

Best regards,

Antoine

[mikePJ1967]

And I've just noticed that the current datasheet on the website - the 2019 version-   still trumpets a 15 year guarantee of production - Surely that statement should be updated if it is not true.
Mike

[ErikaC]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us,

We do not recommend using them in new products, because we do not know exactly when it is going to be discontinued as our products are market driven

At the moment we do not have new designs to offer

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you

Regards,

[obroad]

I'm also trying to find out more as at this time we are heavily committed to the MRF300AN FET and to a lesser extent the MRFX1K80 product family

Are there any PCNs or press releases relating to this as reclassifying entire product lines as "legacy" seems like a major change that would have been announced somewhere.

[mikePJ1967]

It seems to relate to this winding down of the Oak Hill Foundry https://www.nxp.com/pcn/202009028DN which was the main RF LDMOS plant for these sort of devices. Reading between the lines, production will stop soon if it has not already, and then a stock of wafers will be slowly used up, and the status flags will change from 'not recommended' to 'end of life' or 'discontinued' as the stocks fall below certain levels. Which is a huge ticking bomb for those of us who use a few tens of devices a year to build a product which we now know has a part with no obvious replacement. Sadly the analogue RF world does not work at the speed of the more profitable digital - in terms of RF PA designs and so on, these transistors are practically new
Mike.