RFMD qualifies 48V, 30W, GaN RF transistor

RFMD has announced that it has fully qualified the RF3931, a GaN (gallium nitride) RF transistor (pdf datasheet). This is distinct from the GaN transistors announced by International Rectifier and EPC. Those are power devices, not RF devices. They have a silicon substrate whereas most GaN RF transistors have a more expensive III-V substrate, such as GaAs (gallium arsenide).

The RF3931 will operate from dc to 3Ghz, and provides 15dB of gain at 2GHz. I would like to tell you what it costs, but that is not on the press release.

The RF3931 is a darn good-looking transistor; I don’t care who you are.

[Update, RFMD got back to me with a price of $111 for 750 pieces or more. They have a great estore that you can just type the part number into– that was not working when I tried but I told them and they fixed it in less than a day, good job RFMD, we engineers love to get pricing without having to talk to salespeople.]