Milton Feng

Milton Feng co-created the first transistor laser, working with Nick Holonyak in 2004. The paper discussing their work was voted in 2006 as one of the five most important papers published by the American Institute of Physics since its founding 75 years ago. In addition to the invention of transistor laser, he is also well known for inventions of other "major breakthrough" devices, including the world's fastest transistor and light emitting transistor (LET). As of May, 2009 he is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and holds the Nick Holonyak Jr. Endowed Chair Professorship.

Feng was born and raised in Taiwan.

In 2003, Milton Feng and his graduate students Walid Hafez and Jie-Wei Lai broke the record for the world's fastest transistor. Their device, made of indium phosphide and indium gallium arsenide with 25 nm thick base and 75 nm thick collector, marked a frequency of 509 GHz, which was 57 GHz faster than the previous record. In 2005, they succeeded in fabricating a device at Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory to break their own record, reaching 604 GHz. In the following year, Feng and his other graduate student William Snodgrass fabricated a device with 12.5 nm thick base, operating at 765 GHz at room temperature and 845 GHz at minus 55 Celsius degrees.

Reported in the January 5 issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters in 2004, Milton Feng and Nick Holonyak, the inventor of the first practical light emitting diode (LED) and the first semiconductor laser to operate in the visible spectrum, made the world's first light emitting transistor. This hybrid device, fabricated by Feng's graduate student Walid Hafez, had one electrical input and two outputs (electrical output and optical output) and operated at a frequency of 1 MHz. The device was made of indium gallium phosphide, indium gallium arsenide, and gallium arsenide, and emitted infrared photons from the base layer.

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