The development of RF/microwave transistors went almost unnoticed until early 1980's because, unlike Si VLSI, there were no mass consumer markets for such devices. Most applications for RF/microwave transistors had been military or exotic scientific projects. Recently, this has been changed drastically due to the explosive growth in the civil wireless communications and internets. This talk covers the evolution and current status of semiconductor devices for RF/microwave electronics systems. Important background, development and major milestones leading to modern RF/microwave transistors are first presented. This is followed by the discussions of the concept of heterostructure, a feature used frequently in RF/microwave devices. Different transistor types, including Si-, III-V-, and wide bandgap-based devices, and their figures of merit are then addressed. Finally the outlooks of RF/microwave semiconductor devices and their future applications are given.

Juin J. Liou received the B.S. (honors), M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1982, 1983, and 1987, respectively. In 1987, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, where he is now a Professor. His current research interests are micro/nanoelectronics computer-aided design, RF device modeling and simulation, and semiconductor manufacturing and reliability.

Dr. Liou has published six textbooks (another in progress), more than 180 journal papers (including 12 invited articles), and more than 130 papers (including 35 keynote or invited papers) in international and national conference proceedings. He has been awarded more than $4.5 million of research grants from federal agencies (i.e., NSF, DARPA, Navy, Air Force, Army, NIST), state government, and industry (i.e., Semiconductor Research Corp., Intersil Corp., Intel Corp., Lucent Technologies, Texas Instruments, Lockheed Martin), and has held consulting positions with research laboratories and companies in the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore. In addition, Dr. Liou serves as a technical reviewer for various journals and publishers, as well as a chair or member of the technical program committee for several international conferences. Currently, he is an associate editor for the Simulation Journal in the area of VLSI and circuit simulation, and a regional editor (in USA, Canada and South America) for the Microelectronics Reliability, an international journal published by Elsevier Science.

Dr. Liou received ten different awards on excellence in teaching and research from the University of Central Florida and five different awards from the IEEE Electron Device Society. In the summer of 1992, 1993, and 1994, Dr. Liou was selected as an Air Force Summer Research Fellow at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, where he conducted research on modeling and reliability of AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors. In the Fall of 1997, Dr. Liou took a sabbatical leave and held a position as a Visiting Professor in the Electrical Engineering Dept. at National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Dr. Liou is an IEEE EDS Distinguished Lecturer, Vice-Chair of the IEEE EDS Regions/Chapters Committee, member of the IEEE EDS Administrative Committee, member of the IEEE EDS Educational Activities Committee, member of the IEEE EDS Ex-Officio Administrative Committee, senior member of the IEEE, and courtesy professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China.