Engineering professor designs transistor that could enable cheaper, faster
wireless communications
Article by
Julie Stewart Atkinson
November 25,
2019 -- Many of the technologies we rely on, from smartphones to wearable
devices and more, utilize fast wireless communications. What might we
accomplish if those devices transmitted information even
faster?
That’s what
Yuping Zeng, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the
University of Delaware, aims to discover. She and a team of researchers
recently created a high-electron mobility transistor, a device that amplifies
and controls electrical current, using gallium nitride (GaN) with indium
aluminum-nitride as the barrier on a silicon substrate. They described their
results in the journal Applied Physics Express.
Among devices
of its type, Zeng’s transistor has record-setting properties, including record
low gate leakage current (a measure of current loss), a record high on/off
current ratio (the magnitude of the difference of current transmitted between
the on state and off state) and a record high current gain cutoff frequency (an
indication of how much data can be transmitted with a wide range of
frequencies).
Among
devices of its type, Professor Yuping Zeng’s transistor has record-setting
properties, including record low gate leakage current (a measure of current
loss), a record high on/off current ratio (the magnitude of the difference of
current transmitted between the on state and off state) and a record high
current gain cutoff frequency (an indication of how much data can be
transmitted with a wide range of frequencies).
This
transistor could be useful for higher bandwidth wireless communication systems.
For a given current, it can handle more voltage and would require less battery
life than other devices of its type.
“We are
making this high-speed transistor because we want to expand the bandwidth of
wireless communications, and this will give us more information for a certain
limited time,” said Zeng. “It can also be used for space applications because
the gallium nitride transistor we used is radiation robust, and it is also wide
bandgap material, so it can tolerate a lot of power.”
This
transistor represents innovation in both material design and device application
design. The transistors are made on a low-cost silicon substrate, “and this
process can also be compatible with silicon Complementary
metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology, which is the conventional
technology used for semiconductors,” said Zeng.
The
transistor described in the recent paper was just the first of many to come.
“We are
trying to continue to break our own record, both for the low power application
as well as for the high-speed application,” said Zeng. The team also plans to
use their transistors to make power amplifiers that could be particularly
useful for wireless communications as well as other internet-of-things.
Dennis
Prather, Engineering Alumni Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
was a co-author on the Applied Physics Express paper. "With the era of 5G
upon us, it's very exciting to see Professor Zeng's record setting transistors
as a leading contribution to this field,” he said. “Her research is world
renowned and the ECE Department is very lucky to have her on its faculty.
Zeng’s group
is also working on titanium oxide transistors which are transparent and could
be used for backplane displays, competing with the technology for currently commercially
used indium-gallium-zinc oxide (InGaZnO) transistors.
Dennis
Prather, Engineering Alumni Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
was a co-author on the Applied Physics Express paper.
"With
the era of 5G upon us, it's very exciting to see Professor Zeng's record
setting transistors as a leading contribution to this field,” he said. “Her
research is world renowned and the ECE Department is very lucky to have her on
its faculty. To this end, 5G is ushering in a wave of new technologies in
nearly every aspect of mobile communications and wireless networks, to have UD's
ECE department at the leading edge, with Professor Zeng's outstanding research,
is truly a wonderful thing."
Several UD
Delaware units helped Zeng’s group set their new record. The group fabricated
their device in the UD Nanofabrication Facility. Postdoctoral scholar Peng Cui,
the first author on the new Applied Physics Express paper, has received funding
through the Horn Entrepreneurship Postdoctoral Innovation Fellow program and
the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
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