Indium phosphide ICs unleash the high-frequency spectrum

Author

Raghavan, Gopal ; Sokolich, Marko ; Stanchina, William E.

Author_Institution

Conexant Syst. Inc., Newbury Park, CA, USA

Volume

37

Issue

10

fYear

2000

fDate

10/1/2000 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

47

Lastpage

52

Abstract

As demand for high-frequency communications mushrooms, indium phosphide technology has emerged as a leading candidate for chips to meet that need. Already InP ICs with thousands of transistors are reaching speeds of over 65 GHz. The necessary level of complexity and speed is available from HBT ICs built on indium phosphide substrates using materials with different energy bandgaps for the emitter, the base, and, sometimes, the collector. They are the only viable option today for ICs that require 30GHz-plus frequencies and LSI complexity. Applications that can get by with lower levels of integration but require higher frequency operation of 94 GHz and beyond, such as missile radar, are currently best served by indium phosphide high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs)

Keywords

HEMT integrated circuits; III-V semiconductors; bipolar MIMIC; bipolar MMIC; field effect MIMIC; field effect MMIC; indium compounds; 10 to 100 GHz; HBT ICs; InP; LSI complexity; energy bandgaps; high-electron-mobility transistors; high-frequency communications; Circuits; Frequency; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; High speed optical techniques; Indium phosphide; Large scale integration; Optical propagation; Optical receivers; Satellite broadcasting; Silicon;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Spectrum, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9235

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/6.873917

Filename

873917