>"Cai’s team pinpointed oxide trapping as the culprit by studying the transistor’s frequency dependence — the rate at which electric pulses are sent through t

>"Cai’s team pinpointed oxide trapping as the culprit by studying the transistor’s frequency dependence — the rate at which electric pulses are sent through the transistor. At low frequencies, the performance of nanoscale InGaAs transistors appeared degraded. But at frequencies of 1 gigahertz or greater, they worked just fine — oxide trapping was no longer a hindrance. “When we operate these devices at really high frequency, we noticed that the performance is really good,” she says. “They’re competitive with silicon technology.”