This press release is copyrighted by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). Its use is granted only to journalists and news media. Embargo date: 26 April 2002, 5:00 p.m. ET.
For years, gallium nitride has been the Holy Grail of semiconductor researchers. But it was only in the 1990s that the first blue, green, violet, and white light-emitting diodes, as well as the first blue-light semiconductor laser, were fabricated from the compound by Shuji Nakamura, then at Nichia Chemical Industries. The Japanese company has since become the world's largest manufacturer of LEDs, and today, nitride LEDs are common in traffic lights, colorful video billboards, children's toys, even flashlights.
The next step, researchers say, is high-power transistors, which can amplify signals at the highest frequencies and power levels of all semiconductors. But gallium nitride is costly. Now, with a slew of fresh approaches--plus funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--organizations big and small are pushing to commercialize the compound.
The stakes are high. For example, gallium nitride transistors could double or triple the efficiency of base-station amplifiers, which could mean much higher data rates within a given area or, alternatively, coverage of that area by fewer base stations. Possibly even an entire base station might be shrunk to the size of a dormitory refrigerator, small enough to fit on a utility pole, rather than hogging expensive phone office space.
Hybrid-electric vehicles, too, would find the transistors ideal for the circuits that convert direct current from their batteries to an alternating current for running an electric motor. And many more applications are on the cards.
Contact: Glenn Zorpette, 212 419 7580, [email protected] a faxed copy of the complete article ("The Toughest Transistor Yet" by Lester F. Eastman, Cornell University, and Umesh K. Mishra, University of California at Santa Barbara, IEEE Spectrum, May 2002, pp. 28-33) or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
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