You Have a Problem? GaN is the Solution

Technologies typically need 10-20 years from initial demonstration to mature and hence have to show 10x performance from the beginning to survive the inevitable improvement of incumbent technologies. The RF market is currently being served by Ga-polar GaN, Si LDMOS and Si CMOS. GaN dominates in Wireless base station solutions in the 2GHz to 6GHz range and in high power RADAR applications across the frequency spectrum (slowly displacing GaAs). The emerging new technology is N -polar GaN which has demonstrated much higher power density and power added efficiency (PAE), especially in the mm-wave range with an outstanding over 50% PAE at 94 GHz. In this talk the relative merits of the various technologies will be discussed and some broad predictions made including (surprise surprise) the emerging dominance of GaN. Support of the ONR and DARPA is gratefully acknowledged.