But it's still at a stage where it needs a lot of improvement to really make it as a marketable product. Over the past few years, the pace of developments has quickened. When the Materials Research Society held its annual meeting in San Francisco last month, the sessions on wide bandgap semiconductors drew the biggest audiences. A number of firms are now firmly on the wide-bandgap bandwagon. Cree, meanwhile, is pursuing the blue laser and has just announced that it will supply silicon carbide wafers to Westinghouse Electric Corp. for manufacturing high-powered microwave transistors for use in television transmission.
Japan is still ahead in terms of investing in the research.
And that's what happening in the U.S. right now. May 30 in Stanford University's Terman Auditorium. The lecture will also be broadcast live on the Stanford Instructional Television Network. Mercury News Staff Report Mercury Center Home 1996 Mercury Center. The information you receive on-line from Mercury Center is protected by the copyright laws of the United States.