MIL-PRF-19500 manufacturer profile

TT Electronics / OPTEK Technology — MIL-PRF-19500 JAN, JANTX & JANTXV hermetic optoelectronic sourcing

TT Electronics / OPTEK Technology, Inc. is a Texas-based high-reliability optoelectronics manufacturer and the go-to source for hermetically-sealed opto-isolators, IR emitters, phototransistors and photologic sensors qualified to the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency's MIL-PRF-19500 discrete semiconductor specification. Founded in 1968 as Optron in Carrollton, TX and acquired by the UK-listed TT Electronics plc (LSE: TTG) in December 2003, OPTEK is listed on the live DLA QML/QPL-19500 under CAGE Code 32694 at JAN, JANTX and JANTXV levels.

  • 1968
    Founded
  • Plano, TX
    US HQ
  • TT Electronics
    Ownership
  • 32694
    CAGE Code
  • JAN → JANTXV
    Quality Levels
  • /486, /548
    Slash Sheets

About TT Electronics and OPTEK Technology

OPTEK Technology, Inc. traces its founding to 1968 in Carrollton, Texas, where former Texas Instruments engineer Dave Monnich launched a small optoelectronics venture originally called Optron with four employees. In 1979 the business was acquired by TRW Optoelectronics, then in 1988 by OPTEK Technology of McKinney, Texas, before going public on the U.S. markets in 1997. In December 2003, UK-listed TT Electronics plc (London Stock Exchange ticker TTG) acquired OPTEK from private New York holding company Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corporation. At the time OPTEK had annual sales of roughly $70 million and about 1,000 employees across its Carrollton and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico operations, and the deal added optoelectronics and fibre-optic sensor capability to a TT Electronics sensor portfolio that already included IRC resistors and sensors, AB Elektronik automotive sensors, BI Technologies, Welwyn hybrid assemblies, and MMG magnetic materials.

TT Electronics plc itself is a much older business. It traces its origins to W. Tyzack Sons & Turner, a firm of Sheffield toolmakers established in around 1867. The listed vehicle joined the London Stock Exchange in 1948, was reorganised as TT Group plc in 1988 and renamed TT Electronics plc in 2000. Today it is a global engineered-electronics group headquartered in Woking, Surrey, UK (Fourth Floor, St Andrews House, West Street, GU21 6EB; company number 87249), operating across the Power and Connectivity, Global Manufacturing Solutions, and Sensors and Specialist Components divisions. OPTEK Technology sits inside TT's Sensors and Specialist Components business alongside brands such as Semelab, BI Technologies, IRC, AB Connectors, Aero Stanrew and Welwyn Components, and is the group's optoelectronics centre of gravity.

In 2004, shortly after the acquisition closed, OPTEK relocated its Texas operations to 1645 Wallace Drive, Carrollton, TX 75006 — the address that still appears on the face of most JAN and JANTX/JANTXV datasheets in circulation. The current corporate and DLA-listed address for the OPTEK QML-19500 line is 2900 E Plano Parkway, Suite 200, Plano, TX 75074. TT Electronics celebrated OPTEK's 50th anniversary in 2018, dating the brand's continuous history to the original Optron founding in 1968.

QPL / QML-19500 status

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Land and Maritime real-time list of qualified sources for MIL-PRF-19500 currently shows a single, active listing under CAGE Code 32694:

  • TT Electronics / OPTEK Technology, Inc. — 2900 E Plano Pkwy Ste 200, Plano, TX 75074, US

The DLA record enumerates four plant locations that together carry OPTEK's MIL-PRF-19500 process from silicon wafer to finished hermetic device:

  • Plano, TX (HQ) — design, engineering, test and quality assurance at the same manufacturer address
  • Infratech, Inc. — Dallas, TX (10440 Miller Rd, 75238) — infrared LED (IRED) die fabrication
  • Episil Technologies, Inc. — Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan — silicon phototransistor die fabrication
  • Optron de Mexico — Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico — hermetic assembly and test

OPTEK's stated hi-rel accreditation package on top of the MIL-PRF-19500 QML/QPL registration includes MIL-PRF-38534 (hybrid microcircuits), MIL-PRF-38535 (monolithic microcircuits), MIL-STD-750, MIL-STD-883, Nadcap, IPC-A-610D, J-STD-001, ITAR registration, and ISO/TS 16949 and ISO 9001 quality systems. Beyond JAN/JANTX/JANTXV, the OPTEK line also runs commercial screening programmes at TX, TXV, B, S and ESA process levels patterned after MIL-PRF-19500 and MIL-STD-883, so buyers who need near-JAN screening on a part number that never got its own slash sheet can still get it processed under a customer source control drawing (SCD).

Historically, the same organisation appears in the NASA NEPP Active Supplier Assessment Program under its earlier Carrollton address (1215 West Crosby Road, Carrollton, TX 75006-6989), with DESC QPL approval dating to October 1994 at the JANTX and JANTXV product-assurance levels. That continuous DESC/DLA history under the same CAGE Code is one of the reasons long-life defence and space programmes are comfortable specifying OPTEK opto-isolators against MIL-PRF-19500 slash sheets that are now more than three decades old.

MIL-PRF-19500 quality levels — what JAN, JANTX, JANTXV, and JANS actually mean

MIL-PRF-19500 is the U.S. Department of Defense performance specification for hermetically-sealed discrete semiconductor devices — diodes, rectifiers, transistors, thyristors, SCRs, TVS devices, and discrete optoelectronic devices such as optically-coupled isolators and IR emitter/detector pairs. It is administered by the DLA Land and Maritime office in Columbus, Ohio (the successor to DSCC-VQ). The specification defines a stack of ascending product-assurance levels indicated by the prefix on a part number:

Prefix Level name What it adds Typical use case
JAN Joint Army-Navy Baseline qualification against slash sheet, Group A/B/C conformance Ground defence, ruggedised industrial
JANTX JAN with eXtra Testing Adds 168-hour burn-in and additional 100% electrical screening Airborne, avionics, missile
JANTXV JANTX with Visual inspection Adds 100% pre-cap internal visual inspection Higher-reliability avionics, tactical space
JANS Joint Army-Navy-Space Adds wafer lot acceptance, Group E conformance and full space screening Launch vehicles, satellites, deep space
JANHC / JANKC Chip / die-level Unencapsulated die screening for downstream hybrid assembly MIL-PRF-38534 hybrids, custom modules

TT Electronics / OPTEK Technology's active MIL-PRF-19500 line covers the JAN, JANTX and JANTXV levels on the hermetic optocoupler families it is best known for — specifically the 4N2x series against slash sheet /486 and the 4N4x series against slash sheet /548. On top of the individual part-type qualifications (the older Qualified Products List, QPL), the DoD now operates a line-level certification model called the Qualified Manufacturers List (QML); OPTEK holds both, and its own literature describes the accreditation as "QML and QPL certification for JAN/JANTX level." The commercial TX, TXV, B, S and ESA screening flows that OPTEK offers on its non-JAN optocouplers, opto-interrupter switches and photologic sensors are patterned after this same JAN framework and share the same 100% pre-cap visual, temperature-cycle, HTRB, burn-in, fine/gross leak and lot-acceptance steps.

OPTEK's MIL-PRF-19500 optoelectronic portfolio

OPTEK is unusual on QML-19500 in that its entire discrete portfolio is optoelectronic, not silicon-signal. Where other MIL-PRF-19500 houses focus on rectifiers, zeners and transistors, OPTEK's hi-rel product line is built around hermetically-sealed photonic devices where the active element is either an infrared LED, a silicon phototransistor, or an integrated IRED / photodetector pair. In line with buyer intent, this page lists part families and slash sheets rather than individual JAN part numbers — specific part-number availability is confirmed on quote.

Hermetic optically-coupled isolators (opto-isolators / optocouplers)

OPTEK's flagship MIL-PRF-19500 product is the hermetically-sealed optically-coupled isolator. Each device pairs an infrared emitting diode (IRED) with an NPN silicon phototransistor inside a hermetic TO-78 metal can or a 6-pin surface-mount SMD / LCC (leadless chip carrier) package, providing typically 1 kVDC input-to-output electrical isolation across an operating range of −55 °C to +125 °C. The through-hole and SMD variants of the classic 4N2x series (with and without the "A" suffix indicating collector electrically isolated from case) are qualified against MIL-PRF-19500 slash sheet /486 at JAN, JANTX and JANTXV levels; the extended 4N4x series against slash sheet /548 at the same JAN, JANTX and JANTXV levels. Custom hermetic optocouplers processed to the same JAN/TXV screening flow — for example the OPTEK HCC1000 (through-hole TO-78) and HCC1001 (SMD) hermetic isolators used in space-level uninterruptible power supply designs — are supplied against customer source control drawings.

Hermetic infrared LED emitters (IREDs) and VCSEL sources

OPTEK supplies hermetic infrared LED emitters covering the 850 nm to 940 nm band and, more recently, vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) optosensor assemblies. Emitters are qualified to MIL-PRF-19500 quality levels or screened through OPTEK's equivalent TX/TXV flow, with a typical 96, 160 or 240-hour forward-current burn-in depending on the series. LED die is fabricated at Infratech, Dallas, TX — one of the four DLA-listed OPTEK plants — and integrated with silicon detectors inside hermetic packages that survive shock, vibration and thermal cycling well beyond commercial epoxy-encapsulated optocouplers.

Silicon phototransistors, photodarlingtons and photologic sensors

On the detector side, OPTEK builds hermetic silicon phototransistors (NPN, PNP and dual-complementary structures), photodarlingtons for very high current-transfer-ratio applications, and integrated photologic sensors that combine a photodetector, amplifier and Schmitt-triggered logic output on a single die inside a hermetic can. Silicon phototransistor die is fabricated at Episil Technologies, Inc. in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan — the third DLA-listed OPTEK plant — and screened at JANTX or JANTXV (or, on non-JAN parts, at TX/TXV) with 48-hour high-temperature reverse bias at TA = 125 °C and 160- or 240-hour power burn-in at ambient.

Reflective and slotted opto-interrupter switches

For position sensing, tachometry and end-of-travel detection in defence, avionics and industrial equipment, OPTEK builds reflective and slotted (interrupter) optical switches that combine an IRED and a silicon phototransistor or photologic detector in a common housing. These are not all JAN-slashed but are widely processed to OPTEK's TX and TXV screening flow patterned after MIL-PRF-19500 — the same 100% pre-cap visual, temperature-cycle, HTRB, burn-in and lot-acceptance stack that the JAN/JANTX/JANTXV product runs through.

Custom hermetic chip-and-wire opto microelectronic assemblies

OPTEK's Plano-based hi-rel operation runs class-10,000 clean rooms with conductive-epoxy, non-conductive-epoxy, eutectic and solder die attach across Au, Ag and PdAg conductive systems. The result is a capability to build custom hermetic chip-and-wire opto microelectronic assemblies to customer source control drawings — typically pairing IRED and phototransistor die from Infratech and Episil inside a customer-defined package screened at TX, TXV, B, S or ESA process levels. These assemblies are commonly used to close a MIL-PRF-38534 hybrid opto sub-assembly where a standard slash-sheet optocoupler is the wrong size, wrong pin-out or wrong isolation voltage for the application.

Packaging heritage

OPTEK qualifies these device families across a compact but well-established package list, dominated by axial and TO-can hermetic bodies: the through-hole TO-78 metal can (four-lead) for the classic JAN 4N2x and 4N4x opto-isolators, TO-72 for legacy hermetic optocouplers, and the 6-pin SMD / LCC leadless chip-carrier for surface-mount variants (the "U" suffix on the datasheet part number).

Defence and space heritage

OPTEK opto-isolators have been a default choice for hermetic optical isolation in U.S. defence and aerospace programmes for more than four decades. The 4N22 / 4N23 / 4N24 family qualified against MIL-PRF-19500/486 (originally MIL-S-19500) is one of the most widely-designed-in hermetic optocouplers in circulation, appearing across avionics gate-driver isolation, missile electronics, radar power supplies, launch-vehicle control electronics and satellite platform avionics. TT Electronics states that OPTEK products are used in industrial, medical, military, avionics, and test-and-measurement equipment, with hermetic optocouplers such as the HCC1000/HCC1001 specifically designed into space-level uninterruptible power supply (UPS) applications where an optical feedback path is required across a high-voltage isolation barrier.

Beyond MIL-PRF-19500, OPTEK holds parallel accreditations to MIL-PRF-38534 for hybrid microcircuits, MIL-PRF-38535 for monolithic microcircuits, and the standard test-method specs MIL-STD-750 and MIL-STD-883. The Plano headquarters is ITAR-registered and the manufacturing footprint — Plano TX for design/QA, Dallas TX for LED die, Hsinchu Taiwan for phototransistor die, and Ciudad Juárez Mexico for hermetic assembly and test — has been stable enough for long-life defence programmes to specify OPTEK parts with confidence in build-to-print continuity over multi-decade production runs.

How Hybrid Electronics sources TT Electronics / OPTEK JAN parts

Hybrid Electronics Corporation is a Sanford, Florida-based independent stocking distributor and sourcing agent, founded in 1981 as Knight Electronics. We are not an authorised distributor, agent, licensee, franchisee or partner of TT Electronics plc or OPTEK Technology, Inc. What we do is help defence, aerospace, industrial and medical buyers close JAN-level BOMs when the authorised channel cannot support the exact date code, package variant, or long-obsolete lot they need — particularly on hermetic optocouplers where substitution is very difficult and cross-references are limited.

Obsolete and legacy JAN optocouplers

Discontinued and hard-to-find hermetic 4N-series optocouplers, older date codes, legacy Carrollton (Wallace Drive and Crosby Road) production, and prior TRW / Optron-badged inventory. We source excess from OEMs, CMs and long-term storage stocks and can typically provide date-coded traceability.

Allocated current-production JAN parts

JAN, JANTX and JANTXV OPTEK parts that are actively produced but on long lead time or allocation. Send us a shortage list or a full BOM — we will confirm what we can source, in which package (TO-78 versus 6-pin SMD/LCC), and at what lead time.

Slash-sheet and cross-reference sourcing

Have a MIL-PRF-19500 slash-sheet reference (/486 or /548) but no settled manufacturer part number? We can quote OPTEK options and, where useful, cross to equivalent QPL-19500 hermetic optocoupler sources from other qualified manufacturers.

Frequently asked questions

Is TT Electronics / OPTEK Technology still on the MIL-PRF-19500 QPL?

Yes. TT Electronics / OPTEK Technology, Inc. is an active listing on the DLA Land and Maritime real-time MIL-PRF-19500 QML/QPL under CAGE Code 32694, with a manufacturer address at 2900 E Plano Pkwy Ste 200, Plano, TX 75074 and supporting plants for LED die (Infratech, Dallas, TX), phototransistor die (Episil Technologies, Hsinchu, Taiwan) and hermetic assembly and test (Optron de Mexico, Ciudad Juárez).

Who owns OPTEK Technology today?

OPTEK Technology, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of TT Electronics plc, the UK-listed engineered-electronics group (London Stock Exchange ticker TTG, incorporated 1906, headquartered in Woking, Surrey). TT Electronics acquired OPTEK in December 2003 from Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corporation for a deal that added an approximately $70 million optoelectronics business and around 1,000 employees to the TT sensor portfolio.

What JAN quality levels does OPTEK hold on MIL-PRF-19500?

TT Electronics / OPTEK Technology holds MIL-PRF-19500 QML and QPL certification at JAN, JANTX and JANTXV levels on its optoelectronic product lines, and also offers commercial screening at TX, TXV, B, S and ESA process levels alongside MIL-PRF-38534, MIL-PRF-38535, MIL-STD-750 and MIL-STD-883 accreditations. It is also Nadcap-, IPC-A-610D-, J-STD-001- and ITAR-registered, with ISO/TS 16949 and ISO 9001 quality systems.

Which MIL-PRF-19500 slash sheets is OPTEK qualified against?

OPTEK's hermetic optically-coupled isolator families are qualified against MIL-PRF-19500/486 (hermetic TO-78 metal can and 6-pin SMD / LCC opto-isolators — the classic 4N2x series) and MIL-PRF-19500/548 (extended surface-mount opto-isolator series, the 4N4x family), covering JAN, JANTX and JANTXV product-assurance levels.

What OPTEK part families does Hybrid Electronics source?

Hybrid Electronics sources TT Electronics / OPTEK Technology hermetic optoelectronic families across all held JAN quality levels: opto-isolators and optocouplers (TO-78 and SMD/LCC), hermetic IR emitters (IREDs), silicon phototransistors and photodarlingtons, hermetic photologic sensors, reflective and slotted opto-interrupter switches, VCSEL optosensor assemblies, and custom hermetic chip-and-wire opto microelectronic assemblies. We work by exact part number and by MIL-PRF-19500 slash-sheet reference and support both current-production and obsolete legacy inventory.

Is Hybrid Electronics an authorised TT Electronics or OPTEK distributor?

No. Hybrid Electronics is an independent stocking distributor and sourcing agent. We are not a distributor, reseller, agent, licensee, partner or authorised service provider of TT Electronics plc or OPTEK Technology, Inc. All trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Trademark and affiliation notice. All company names, product names, and trademarks referenced on this page are the property of their respective owners. Hybrid Electronics Corporation is an independent stocking distributor and sourcing agent; we are not a distributor, reseller, agent, licensee, partner, or authorized service provider of TT Electronics plc or OPTEK Technology, Inc. unless expressly stated. Component sourcing is subject to availability and inspection. Hybrid Electronics does not sell counterfeit parts and does not offer repair services. MIL-PRF-19500 and JAN quality-level designations are administered by the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency (DLA).