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These amplifiers not only increased frequency of operation and provided superior OIP3 (output third order intercept point) but also enabled even greater ease of use. But as HBT technology became available, ERA-series amplifiers using HBT technology were developed, initially pushing the frequency of operation to 8 GHz and later to 20 GHz. User-friendliness, outstanding performance and low cost made these devices the darlings of circuit designers. įollowing the industry trend toward greater adoption of semiconductor technologies, Mini-Circuits introduced the wideband MAR- and MAV-series of MMIC amplifiers, which used Silicon homojunction technology operating to 2 GHz. Though the theory was proposed as early as 1957, production of HBTs had to wait until 1977 for the advent of equipment that was capable of manufacturing it first with MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy) and later with MOCVD (Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition). His work earned him a Nobel prize in 2000. Gradual performance improvements, especially in the frequency of operation drove German American physicist Herbert Kroemer to develop the theory of the Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor (HBT) which uses two or more different semiconductor materials with different bandgaps to enable high frequency operation. This was soon replaced by Silicon, as Germanium stops working above 75☌, which makes it impractical for most applications. The earliest version of the device to be developed and produced was a homojunction transistor using Germanium. Transistors would have profound impacts on the rapid evolution of technologies from wireless communications to computing, and ultimately shape the landscape of the information age. John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for their research on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect. The invention in 1947 heralded the beginning of the semiconductor industry which changed the world forever. Bell Labs engineers were tasked with developing the transistor (a portmanteau of “transfer resistor”) as a smaller, less cumbersome alternative to the existing technology. Prior to the invention of the transistor, telephone exchanges were built using bulky vacuum tubes and mechanical relays. Radha Setty, Technical Advisor, Mini-Circuits Introduction