Georgia Tech and IHP show SiGe transistor with an f_max of 798GHz

Although these operating speeds were achieved at 4.3K, the researchers believe that record speeds at room temperature aren't far off. Professor John Cressler, who led the research for Georgia Tech, said: "The transistor we tested was a conservative design and the results indicate there is significant potential to achieve similar speeds at room temperature – which would enable potentially world changing progress in high data rate wireless and wired communications, as well as signal processing, imaging, sensing and radar applications. Moreover, I believe these results also indicate that the goal of breaking the so called 'terahertz barrier' – terahertz speeds in a robust and manufacturable SiGe transistor – is within reach." In fact, Prof Cressler said when the transistor was run at room temperature, it achieved an f_max of 417GHz. "At that speed, it's already faster than 98% of all the transistors available right now." IHP designed the heterojunction bipolar transistor, made from a nanoscale SiGe alloy embedded within a silicon transistor, and fabricated it on a 130nm bicmos process. Prof Cressler and his team performed analysis, test and evaluation.