The roles cited for compound semiconductors in public versions of existing technology roadmaps from the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, Inc., Optoelectronics Industry Development Association, Microelectronics Advanced Research Initiative on Optoelectronic Interconnects, and Optoelectronics Industry and Technology Development Association (OITDA) are discussed and compared within t...

A theoretical and experimental study of the Gunn effect is presented. It appears that this effect, originally observed by Gunn as a time variation in the current through ohmic samples of n-GaAs when the sample voltage exceeded a critical value, can be accounted for by the transferred electron model of Ridley and Watkins. This model is based on a transfer of electrons from a low-mass, high-mobil...

Some examples of space-borne applications that require improvements in detector technology compared with conventional Si and Ge designs are described. Properties of compound semiconductors are noted, and a range of different detector developments are briefly reviewed. Material fabrication improvements for several compound semiconductors have resulted in near Fano-limited performance.

Integration of compound semiconductors with silicon (Si) has been a long-standing goal for the semiconductor industry, as direct band gap compound semiconductors offer, for example, attractive photonic properties not possible with Si devices. However, mismatches in lattice constant, thermal expansion coefficient, and polarity between Si and compound semiconductors render growth of epitaxial het...