An alloy of gallium and arsenic compound (GaAs) that is used as the base material for chips. Several times faster than silicon, it is used in high frequency applications such as cellphones, DVD players and especially fiber optics.
In 2001, Motorola developed a technique that placed a spongy layer between gallium arsenide and silicon on the same wafer. Combining these two materials yielded a higher-speed product at a lower cost.
For processing in AI datacenters, gallium arsenide and silicon are manufactured on the same wafer. The GaAs is used for optical generation, and the silicon is used for control. See
gallium nitride,
III-V semiconductor and
AI datacenter.