SiGe versus GaAs - is there a challenge?

There has been considerable recent activity with SiGe technology and much speculation that it will soon dis­place GaAs. Advances in conventional CMOS, over the years, have been based around device scaling. As submi-cron dimensions have been approached, further scaling of CMOS becomes increasingly complex and fundamen­tal limits will soon emerge. The significance of SiGe is that it is compatible with conventional silicon process­ing and offers improved material properties, so that con­tinued advancement can be sustained. We examine the present status of SiGe with respect to GaAs