Mau-Chung Frank Chang

Biography

Dr. Mau-Chung Frank Chang is regarded as the driving force behind the development and commercialization of GaAs-based heterostructure bipolar transistors (HBT). He took what was once considered theoretical technology and enabled reliable, readily manufactured commercial devices critical to the broadband, linear, efficient and low-cost power amplifiers in most of today’s cellular telephones and wireless local area networks(WLANs).

Now professor and vice chair of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Chang pioneered the development and technology transfer of the GaAs HBT while a staff member at the Rockwell Science Center in Thousand Oaks, California. Today, about 80 percent of cellular telephones and all the WLAN systems use the GaAs HBT technology that he developed for use in power amplification in transmitters.

He also led the successful HBT technology transfer and production implementation effort to develop HBT materials grown with carbon instead of beryllium for the mass production of GaAs HBTs, boosting its long term reliability by at least a million times.