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Kopin gets patents for GaAsInN transistor wafers

So-called GAIN-HBT wafers will be crucial as power amplifiers need to run at higher frequencies and duty cycles to accommodate increasing data rates, says the Taunton, MA, company.

Kopin has received two US patents covering advanced wafer technology for next-generation cell phone power amplifiers (PAs).

Patents 6,847,060 and 6,750,480 cover so-called GAIN-HBT technology, which is based on the quarternary material system GaAsInN.

According to the Taunton, MA, wafer supplier, the physics of the material will enable greater flexibility in transistor design, something that will become crucial as PAs used in cell phones are increasingly required to run at higher frequencies and duty cycles.

Applications such as mobile video will put current PA technology under pressure as data rates increase, and Kopin believes that its technology could be implemented without the usual difficulties associated with a new material.

"The changes in transistor structure can be rendered transparent to the circuit fabrication process, lowering the technological barriers for implementation," said Roger Welser, Kopin's director of GaAs HBT technology.

Welser led the Kopin team that engineered the GAIN-HBT structure by introducing indium and nitrogen into the 50 nm base layer of a GaAs wafer. The more complex material increases the frequency performance and improves temperature stability, while reducing operating voltage.

Patent 6,750,480 covers the basic GAIN-HBT device technology, while 6,847,060 describes an enhanced transistor that contains graded compositions of the four constituent elements.

"GAIN-HBT transistor wafers provide improvements in all the key areas for mobile appliances: performance, battery life, integration and durability," said John Fan, the company's CEO.

"Although the base layer is only about 200 atomic layers thick, and composed of four elements in varying compositions, Kopin's production controls allow reproducible growth of these transistors for maximum performance advantages."

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