Vacuum tubes rebuilt with MEMS — electronics that keep working at 650°C, through radiation and EMP, where silicon simply stops.
InnoSys
venture active confidence: Medium status: Useful updated 2026-08-13
Summary
InnoSys builds vacuum microelectronics in Salt Lake City for heat and radiation that defeat ordinary semiconductors. The niche is defensible, but competing silicon-carbide and gallium-nitride approaches—and a record still dominated by federal R&D contracts after 25 years—cap the case.
Impact
The constraint InnoSys works against is narrow and stubborn. Conventional semiconductors fail at high temperature, under ionizing radiation, and against EMP; the traditional answer — vacuum electronics — is bulky, fragile, and hand-built. SSVD's claim is that vacuum electron transport can be fabricated with MEMS processes and packaged like solid state, which would make devices that are, in the company's words, "much smaller, lighter and more efficient than the traditional TWTAs" while keeping the environmental tolerance that made vacuum devices worth using. The company states operation up to 650°C without cooling, resistance to radiation and EMP, and 20+ year life in hostile environments.
Where that matters is specific rather than broad. A Venus lander cannot refrigerate its electronics; NASA has funded InnoSys on exactly that problem, first for extreme-temperature electronics for planned Venus missions and later for an extreme-environment communication transceiver. Millimeter-wave amplifiers at K through W band are what push data bandwidth on radar and satellite links. Neutron-generator detectors used in nonproliferation work need hermetic optical feedthroughs that survive the radiation environment — a DOE Phase II project worth $995,092. Each of these is a component that unblocks a system somebody else builds.
The counterfactual is what keeps this at C rather than higher. Extreme-environment electronics has multiple credible pursuers, and the wide-bandgap semiconductor path (SiC, GaN) is attacking the same requirement with far more industry capital behind it. InnoSys holds patents and a differentiated device physics, but nothing in the public record establishes that a program flew, shipped, or scaled on SSVD rather than on an alternative. A supplier whose parts are designed into deployed systems at volume would be a different letter; the evidence for that is not public.
What They Are Building
The product line runs across four families. SSVD traveling-wave tubes and amplifiers cover K, Ka, Q, V, E, and W bands with up to 20% bandwidth, pulsed or CW, for radar and communications, built with MEMS-based technology the company credits for "superior manufacturing yield and device reliability advantages." SSVD triodes and vacuum transistors come in triode, tetrode, and pentode configurations in high-temperature vacuum packages. High-efficiency, high-voltage switching power supplies drive TWTs, magnetrons, and klystrons. Two further products sit outside the core: ASIP, an integration platform for smart lighting and buildings, and GOAT, scenario-based grid-worker training software.
Manufacturing is in-house in Salt Lake City — a Class 1000 clean room, brazing chambers, machining, assembly, and test — and the company states that all products are made in the USA.
What They Need Now
The durable hiring emphasis is hardware: microfabrication and MEMS process engineers, vacuum and materials engineers with glass-to-metal sealing and brazing experience, RF and microwave designers at millimeter-wave frequencies, and reliability engineers who can qualify parts to defense and space standards. The commercial-side need is the harder one — a components company sustained by SBIR needs business development that converts federal R&D into design wins inside primes' programs of record. No agent-readable careers board was found; approach through the company's published contact address.
Who Could Help
Program managers at defense and space primes who source amplifiers and rad-hard components; DOE national-laboratory and nonproliferation detector procurement contacts; NASA planetary-mission instrument teams working Venus and other high-temperature targets; and investors or acquirers in the RF and extreme-environment components space who understand the transition from SBIR funding to production contracts.
Utah Context
InnoSys grew out of University of Utah electrical engineering: co-founders Ruey-Jen "Jennifer" Hwu and Larry Sadwick are the co-inventors named on the SSVD patents, and Hwu is CEO and president. The company sits inside Utah's defense and aerospace manufacturing base alongside Hill AFB sustainment work and the state's precision-components suppliers, and it is a repeat client of the state's federal-funding apparatus — the Nucleus Institute's Grow program, formerly the Utah Innovation Center, has assisted it in winning non-dilutive federal awards. It is one of the longer-running examples in this corpus of a Utah company built primarily on federal R&D rather than venture capital.
Evidence
- Source: InnoSys SBIR Award · https://www.sbir.gov/awards/196910 — DOE SBIR Phase II, $995,092, contract DE-SC0021772, 2022; PI Larry Sadwick; establishes the Salt Lake City address and UEI SKSZV1JCCLJ7.
- InnoSys official website · https://www.innosystech.com — founding year, address, SSVD description, facilities, and the product families and specifications quoted above.
- InnoSys products page · http://www.innosystech.com/products.html — band coverage, bandwidth, device configurations, and the "made in the USA" claim.
- Utah Innovation Center success story, Utah Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity · https://business.utah.gov/innovation/innosys-success-story-highlighted-by-utah-innovation-center/ — leadership, the NASA Venus camera work, and the SBIR/STTR relationship across DoD, DOE, and NASA.
- Nucleus Institute newsroom, AFWERX Manufacturing Challenge award · https://www.nucleusutah.org/newsroom/utah-innosys-afwerx-manufacturing-challenge-award — $1.75M Direct-to-Phase-II contract via AFWERX and SpaceWERX, and the 650°C / EMP / 20-year SSVD performance claims.
- US Patent 6,995,502, "Solid state vacuum devices and method for making the same," issued 2006-02-07 · https://patents.justia.com/patent/6995502 — assigned to InnoSys, Inc., Salt Lake City; Hwu and Sadwick as inventors.
- NASA SBIR abstract, SSVD extreme temperature electronics for planned Venus missions · https://sbir.gsfc.nasa.gov/SBIR/abstracts/03/sbir/phase1/SBIR-03-1-S4.02-8226.html
See Also
- ACT Aerospace — another Utah precision manufacturer serving defense-adjacent markets.
- Nielson Scientific — a second Utah microfabrication shop built on federal R&D awards.
Open Questions
- Careers URL: No agent-readable careers board found (2026-08-13). The company publishes a contact address but no jobs page.
- Has SSVD been designed into a fielded system, or does the record end at prototypes and Phase II deliverables? This is the question that would move the tier.
- Headcount, revenue, and total federal awards to date are not public in sources reviewed. An SBIR portfolio aggregate for UEI
SKSZV1JCCLJ7would settle the last of these. cik=0000720694resolves to an SEC registrant named "INNOSYS INC" with two REGDEX filings (2003-09-08 and 2004-08-05) and no address in the EDGAR record. The dates are consistent with this company raising private capital, but the identifier is not independently confirmed as the same entity and should be treated as provisional.- The older
innosys.comandinnosysinc.comdomains fail TLS with expired certificates;innosystech.comis the live site. Whether the old domains were ever this company's is unverified. - What is the year of the AFWERX Direct-to-Phase-II award? The announcement gives January 27 without a year.