Graphene and high frequency transistors.

[diracshore]

Hi all,

Reading the March 15th issue of nature, quite a few articles on graphene. There was a discussion on the difficulties of creating high frequency transistors using graphene. There was a mention of III-V materials such as gallium arsenide and indium phosphide that have been used to create transistors operating at 1 terahertz. Currently the best graphene transistors run at 300Ghz, where as silicon tops out at around 10Ghz.

So my question is what is the fastest III-V transistor actually available on the market now ?

[amspire]

I have no idea about the fastest discrete transistors, but the fastest transistors tend to be transistors embedded into an IC design. The moment you have leads, parasitic capacitances from the packaging, etc, you loose most of the speed.

I know for example that working sampling oscilloscope circuits in the lab are pushing towards being able to view 1THz waveforms, but unfortunately they only work with a super-fast risetime edge generated from a Non-Linear Transmission Line on the same chip located microns away from the sampling circuit.

Richard.