Electrooptic sampling in GaAs integrated circuits

Electrooptic sampling has been shown to be a very powerful technique for making time-domain measurements of fast electronic devices and circuits. Previous embodiments relied on a hybrid connection between the device under test and a transmission line deposited on an electrooptic substrate such as LiTaO3. The hybrid nature of this approach leads to device packaging difficulties and can result in measurement inaccuracies and performance degradation at very high frequencies. Since GaAs is electrooptic and an attractive material for high speed devices, we have devised an approach of direct electrooptic sampling of voltage waveforms in the host semiconductor. In this paper, we review the principles and limitations of electrooptic sampling and discuss this new noninvasive technique for electronic probing with applications to characterizing high speed GaAs circuits and devices.