GaAs INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND CHARGE-COUPLED DEVICES FOR HIGH SPEED SIGNAL PROCESSING.

The superior electronic properties of GaAs, as compared with silicon, make possible higher performance levels in GaAs signal processing devices than have been demonstrated with silicon. Only recently, however, have advances in GaAs materials and processing made possible the fabrication of such devices as sub-100 ps propagation delay, high density planar GaAs integrated circuits with large-scale integration (LSI) compatible power levels, and high transfer efficiency GaAs charge-coupled devices which should be capable of multi-gigahertz clocking rate operation. These high performance devices should mave major impact on the high speed signal processing area, making possible system approaches which could not be practically realized with existing silicon technology. In this paper the advantages of GaAs for high speed signal processing are reviewed and laboratory results obtained with high speed GaAs devices are reported.