Freescale Semiconductor Inc. announced that researchers had created metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) using gallium arsenide (GaAs). These types of transistors drive nearly all silicon integrated circuits. If Freescale has overcome the challenges associated with this endeavor, the innovation could result in a cell-phone-on-a-chip and instantaneous analog-to-digital conversion. The innovation could allow chip manufacturers to improve the speed and performance of processors. The origination of the work occurred in East Germany in the 1980s, when Matthias Passlack, a researcher at Freescale, began his pursuit of gallium arsenide digital integrated circuits. Passlack joined Bell Laboratories' optoelectronic device research group when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and he was free to leave East Germany. Gallium arsenide and other III-V semiconductors offer a better choice of material than silicon for many purposes, including light-emitting diodes and lasers. The compounds conduct electrons as much as 20 times faster than silicon. However, in spite of its advantages, gallium arsenide has not been used in commercial-grade microprocessors or memory circuits because it could not be used to fabricate MOSFETs until now. MOSFETs form the basis of the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits that are used in microprocessors, RAM, and microcontroller chips.