Cree sees new era in microwave ICs with GaN developments
By Semiconductor Business News
Aug 15, 2000 (8:40 AM)
URL: semibiznews.com
DURHAM, N.C.--Cree Inc. here claimed a record in radio-frequency power performance with a gallium-nitride (GaN) high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT). The transistor was incorporated in a hybrid amplifier that achieved 40 watts of pulsed RF output power at 10-GHz, said Cree, which announced the development at last week's Biennial IEEE Cornell University Conference on Advanced Concepts in High Performance Devices in Ithaca, N.Y. Cree said the device's performance is 2.5 times higher than previously announced devices running at 10-GHz frequency.
"The 40-watt hybrid amplifier demonstrates the vast improvement in power performance over GaAs [gallium arsenide], yielded by placing the GaN device on our high thermal conductivity semi-insulating SiC [silicon carbide] substrates," said John Palmour, director of advanced devices at Cree. "We believe the first demonstration of a GaN [monolithic microwave IC] heralds a new era of high performance wide bandgap MMIC-based amplifiers that are expected to outperform other semiconductor technologies for power and bandwidth."
In other developments, Cree reported it has demonstrated the first MMIC in GaN, grown on a semi-insulating SiC substrate. The Durham company said an MMIC can place the RF matching circuitry of the amplifier directly on the chip, allowing for more efficient, broader band, performance than in hybrid amplifiers--such as the one described at last week's conference. According to Cree, the first GaN MMIC achieved 20 watts of pulsed RF output power at 9 GHz, which was a higher RF output power than available from GaAs MMICs in this frequency range. |
