Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
gadolinium oxide on a gallium arsenide semiconductor
Currently, most wireless applications use gallium arsenide metal-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MESFETs), which lack a gate oxide, but which are necessary because higher frequencies are attainable with gallium arsenide compared to silicon. (That's because electrons can travel five to six times faster in gallium arsenide-based transistors.)
Getting a complicated single-crystal gate oxide to grow on gallium arsenide was totally unexpected because scientists did not think it was possible. But the Bell Labs scientists made an attempt and succeeded. Then, when the two crystals came together perfectly, it was an even bigger surprise. "You would not expect two vastly different materials to have strong, complete bonds and a defect-free interface," said Bell Labs materials scientist Minghwei Hong. "We now are investigating why it happens."
That's 3yrs ago so it reasonable to assume that the tech is commercially viable now and it's not impossible that given it's superiority to silicon that the the claim is true and could explain why no special cooling is required to run@5ghz.
Bell Labs was using MBE for these growths and was growing them layer by layer, this is very slow and a far cry of the throughput necessary to make this process even remotely commercial. There has been much research done to this effect, especially in designing CVD processes for the gate oxide, but nothing has come close to becoming a reality - much less a 90nm reality. There's still too many problems with the deposition. I'd say this is still at least 2-3 years away. University research, even IF they have working substrates, is just that - RESEARCH. Trust me 'cuz I'm doing research in this right now, getting a working sample is really difficult; but, making the process viable commercially is VERY difficult.