The unique electronic properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) make them promising candidates for next generation electronics, particularly in systems that demand high frequency (e.g., radio frequency, RF) operation. Transistors that incorporate perfectly aligned, parallel arrays of SWNTs avoid the practical limitations of devices that use individual tubes, and they also enable comprehensive experimental and theoretical evaluation of the intrinsic properties. Thus, devices consisting of arrays represent a practical route to use of SWNTs for RF devices and circuits. The results presented here reveal many aspects of device operation in such array layouts, including full compatibility with conventional small signal models of RF response. Submicrometer channel length devices show unity current gain (f(t)) and unity power gain frequencies (f(max)) as high as approximately 5 and approximately 9 GHz, respectively, with measured scattering parameters (S-parameters) that agree quantitatively with calculation. The small signal models of the devices provide the essential intrinsic parameters: saturation velocities of 1.2 x 10(7) cm/s and intrinsic values of f(t) of approximately 30 GHz for a gate length of 700 nm, increasing with decreasing length. The results provide clear insights into the challenges and opportunities of SWNT arrays for applications in RF electronics.

Data are presented demonstrating the laser operation (quasicontinuous, ∼200K) of an InGaP–GaAs–InGaAs heterojunction bipolar light-emitting transistor with AlGaAs confining layers and an InGaAs recombination quantum well incorporated in the p-type base region. Besides the usual spectral narrowing and mode development occurring at laser threshold, the transistor current gain β=ΔIc∕ΔIb in common emitter operation decreases sharply at laser threshold (6.5→2.5,β>1).

The authors report the calculation of the minority carrier distribution in the base region of the transistor laser (TL) employing the relevant continuity equations and experimental carrier lifetimes, spontaneous and stimulated, extracted from the transistor I-V characteristics. A charge control model of the TL is developed, consistent with the short recombination lifetime of the quantum-well base (which competes with the short emitter-to-collector transit time). The absence of carrier-photon resonance of a TL is demonstrated with the 3dB bandwidth (IB∕IB,th=1.5) estimated to be 30GHz for a 400μm long laser cavity length and 70GHz for a 150μm cavity.