Officials say the Raytheon-led team demonstrated the semiconductor compound growth on silicon as part of a $6.5 million U.S. Office of Naval Research project. The demonstration is a key step in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's compound semiconductor materials on silicon program.

The COSMOS program is an effort to reduce the costs of circuitry for military applications.

"Our team's process of directly growing a semiconductor compound on a uniquely engineered silicon substrate provides a technical approach that is creating a new class of integrated circuits that will be more affordable for our Defense Department customers," Mark Russell, Raytheon integrated defense systems engineering vice president, said in a statement.

The COSMOS program also includes Teledyne Scientific Imaging, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Paradigm Research, IQE, Soitec and Silicon Valley Technology Center.