Low Temperature Electronics: Physics, Devices, Circuits, and Applications , Edmundo A. Gutiérrez-D. , M. Jamal Deen , and Cor L. Claeys Academic Press, San Diego, Calif., 2001, $299.00 (964 pp.). ISBN 0-12-310675-3
The subject of Low Temperature Electronics by Edmundo A. Gutiérrez-D., M. Jamal Deen, and Cor L. Claeys is often referred to as “cold electronics” or “cryoelectronics.” It has to do with the behavior at cryogenic temperatures of electronic and superconducting devices (from DC to microwaves), optoelectronic devices (including solid-state lasers), and circuits incorporating those devices. Although many journal articles and conferences have dealt with the field, the majority in the past 20 years, it has been 15 years since the appearance of the most recent book (Cryoelectronics, R. K. Kirschman, ed. IEEE Press, 1986), itself a collection of published papers.
Gutiérrez-D., Deen, and Claeys, assisted by six of their colleagues, have assembled in one comprehensive volume an array of the best material from the intervening years. They include an annotated bibliography of close to 2000 references, an astonishing number for any book.
Three broad cryogenic temperature regimes are covered in the book: from room temperature down to 77 K—the liquid nitrogen region, where commercial applications of cold electronics flourish; between 77 K and the liquid helium range, 4.2 K, where there are fewer applications—but these applications may be added to as cryocoolers are improved; and from 4.2 K down to the millikelvin range, where, for example, dilution refrigerators are used to cool bolometers and other devices. These lowest temperatures are most often involved in research.
Often the most effective way to sense the breadth of a book’s coverage is to scan the chapter titles. I think that is the case here, at least for the first seven chapters: Physics of Silicon at Cryogenic Temperatures; Silicon Devices and Circuits; Reliability Aspects of Cryogenic Silicon Technologies; Radiation Effects and Low-Frequency Noise in Silicon Technologies; Heterostructure and Compound Semiconductor Devices; Compound Heterostructure Semiconductor Lasers and Photodiodes; and High-Temperature Superconductor/Semiconductor Hybrid Microwave Devices and Circuits.
The bibliography and associated discussions extending back to the 1970s, uncover an interesting history, one that is especially memorable to those of us who worked in the field through those early days. We can recall the efforts of the researchers who discovered that the performance of silicon and then gallium arsenide bipolar transistors was unsatisfactory at low temperatures. The authors discuss the reason that was so, and the reason that the technology improved so markedly with the advent of silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) bulk transistors, silicon-on-insulator MOS transistors, gallium arsenide field-effect transistors (FETs), silicon and gallium arsenide MOSFETS, and silicon germanium bipolar transistors. A new class of devices rich in quantum phenomena, typified by the resonant tunneling diode, has the potential for highspeed and wide-bandwidth electronic devices. That those advances extend to optical and optoelectronic devices as well is covered in chapter 6, where the authors emphasize optoelectronics and lasers. They show why quantum well (QW) and strained-layer QW lasers have come to be preferred over the more conventional double-heterostructure lasers; indium phosphide/indium gallium arsenide avalanche photodiodes and QW infrared photodiodes are also discussed.
Chapter 7 provides an example of the sometimes relative nature of adjectival references: The advent of high-temperature superconductivity has resulted in descriptions of “high-temperature” operation of devices at 77 K. In this chapter, the authors discuss microwave filters, antennas, and oscillators as examples of substantial advances made possible by the high-temperature superconductors (HTS). When an HTS filter is integrated with a semiconductor low-noise, high-electron-mobility transistor amplifier, a “hybrid” front-end receiver is born. This combination of superconductor, semiconductor, and other cryogenic component technologies has resulted in a new class of high-performance communications receivers.
Even though I am an enthusiast for the book, I did find some negatives, beginning with the daunting price. The most glaring is chapter 8, titled Cryocooling and Thermal Management. It is not nearly complete enough on a subject that is well covered by several recent books and monographs. The situation is not helped by this—and only this—chapter’s paucity of references (eight of them, compared, for example, with 281 in chapter 2). Further, the authors apparently overlooked the Review of Scientific Instruments as a rich source of papers in the field of cryogenic cooling, refrigerators, cryostats, and temperature stabilization and measurement. And the editing could have been better: He2 is used as a symbol for helium (He); °K is used rather than K; 10 KG (for 10 kG); and milliKelvin (instead of millikelvin).
I do not want this review to end on a negative note, perhaps obscuring my quite positive response. It is not just that Low Temperature Electronics is the only game in town; it assuredly is much more than that. It is a book for which the members of the cryoelectronics community have long been waiting. I believe that they will not be disappointed.
