New Products First Electrically Pumped Hybrid Silicon Laser Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Intel Corporation have successfully developed the first electrically pumped silicon laser using silicon manufacturing process. The research team has developed a method to combine the light-emitting and amplification properties of indium phosphide with the light-guiding properties of silicon into single chip by bonding InP-based InGaAlAs optical gain layers directly to a silicon waveguide which forms the laser cavity to control the laser performance. Optical signals of different wavelengths can be obtained by modifying silicon waveguide properties without disturbing the In-based material. The most important part of the manufacturing process is the use of low-temperature oxygen plasma to create a thin oxide layer (about 25 atoms thick) of the surface of both the materials. Source: www. semiconductor-today.com, September 19, 2006. 20 GHz HJ FET WITH 0.75 dB NOISE DEVELOPED A new heterojunction FET with noise figure of 0.75 dB, 10 dB gain at 20 GHz has been developed by California Eastern Laboratories, Santa Clara, USA. It is quite suitable for DBS low-noise block converter (LNB) module or as a first –stage low noise amplifier (LNA) in receiver applications. It can also be used for sensor applications in Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM) band beyond 24 GHz. At TA= +250C its absolute maximum ratings have drain-to-source voltage of 4V and gate-to-source voltage of -3V. Source: Microwave and RF Notepad, September 2006. High Speed Optical Detection System Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California has developed a multichannel detection system with 768 channels, maximum count rate of 2 MHz per channel or over 1.5 GHz total rate and very low readout time close to 500 micro second. Besides electron detection, it can also used to detect ultraviolet and visible light for laser spectroscopy applications by adding a photocathode. Source: Laser Focus World, June 2006. LNA MMICS Cover 6 to 36 GHz Hittite Microwave Corp., MA, reports new GaAs PHEMT MMIC low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) HMC564, HMC565, HMC566 die operating from a +3V supply have been made available. They require no external matching. The HMC564 rated from 7 to 13.5 GHz, 1.8dB noise figure and 17dB gain; HMC565 operates from 6 to 20GHz with 2.4dB noise figure and 22dB gain while HMC566 operates from 29-36GHz with 2.8dB noise figure and 28dB gain. Source: Microwaves & RF website, June 2006