The goal of this research is to investigate a novel microwave oscillator — the MESFET version contiguous domain oscillator. By combining the transferred electron effect in GaAs material with the two dimensional electrostatics in the device, a series of contiguous electron packets can be generated in the channel of a resistive gate MESFET. Therefore this novel device can eliminate some restraints which are suffered by the presently existing oscillators, and provides unique new features for oscillators: a wide range of oscillation frequency (from a few tens of GHz to a hundred GHz), an ideal current source, instantaneous frequency tuning, compatibility with the presently existing planar semiconductor integration technology, etc. This investigation is composed of two parts. The first pa rt is to use various semiconductor processing technologies to fabricate the devices which can supply an ideal electrostatic condition for the electrons in the channel; the second part is the device characterization; which includes power output, frequency tunability, and the relationship between device performance and device parameters
