Chemistry, metallurgy and other branches of materials science have played an increasingly important role in the development of wireless products. Traditional methods often cannot meet the simultaneous demands for lower cost and higher performance, which presents an opportunity for a showcase of new developments. In electronics, semiconductors are usually the first components that come to mind. In the past half-dozen years, this industry segment has seen dramatic changes in the cost and performance of several materials and their processing technologies — silicon CMOS and BiCMOS, GaAs and AlGaAs, and more recently indium phosphide (InP), silicon-germanium (SiGe) and silicon carbide (SiC). As remarkable as the development of new semiconductor materials has been, it does not overshadow improvements to the "old" silicon technology. As pointed in out in the article by RF Micro Devices engineers in this issue, wireless designers may have five or more semiconductor types to choose from for the same application. The ability to weigh the tradeoffs is as important as basic circuit design skills.
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