Mobility Enhancement in Strained Antimonide Quantum Wells

摘要

Low-power electronics is essential for a number of military and commercial applications. Previous work at NRL has demonstrated high-performance, low-power, antimonide-based compound semiconductor transistors. In these devices, InAs is used as an electron channel with mobilities as high as 30,000 cm2/V-s at room temperature. This work has been transitioned to industry for analog applications, resulting in X-band and W-band low-noise amplifiers with record low power consumption (a factor of 3 and 10 lower than InP- and GaAs- based amplifiers, respectively). For digital and mixed-signal applications, power consumption can be minimized by designing circuits with complementary n(electron)- and p(hole)-channel transistors. These circuits consume negligible power except when being switched. Military applications for this technology are expected to include high-speed analog-to-digital conversion for high- performance radar and miniature air vehicles (MAVs), autonomous sensing, and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).