GaAs

GaAs has a higher saturated electron velocity and higher electron mobility, allowing gallium arsenide transistors to function at frequencies in excess of 250 GHz. GaAs devices are relatively insensitive to overheating, owing to their wider energy bandgap, and they also tend to create less noise(disturbance in an electrical signal) in electronic circuits than silicon devices, especially at high frequencies. This is a result of higher carrier mobilities and lower resistive device parasitics.

Because of its wide bandgap, pure GaAs is highly resistive. Combined with a high dielectric constant, this property makes GaAs a very good substrate forIntegrated circuits and unlike Si provides natural isolation between devices and circuits. This has made it an ideal material for monolithic microwave integrated circuits, MMICs, where active and essential passive components can readily be produced on a single slice of GaAs.

GaAs devices find application at RF and microwave frequencies for both linear and high‐speed logic applications.

The growth in the GaAs RF semiconductor business can be attributed to three key aspects.

A major driver is the growth in cellular infrastructure (base-station) business and the move to new standards, simultaneously requiring high efficiency and excellent linearity from the amplifier performance together with cost effectiveness. This has led to an increased demand for GaAs power products.

Another driver was the boom in the cellular market with unprecedented demand for handsets. The superior power-added efficiency of GaAs power amplifiers has led to increasing use of these microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs) and modules in new handset designs.

Additionally, the accelerating demand for broad-band communication equipment to service the point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and emerging LMDS markets has stimulated further growth in the GaAs  MMIC business.