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Advanced InP and GaAs HEMT MMIC technologies for MMW commercial products
Abstract
NGST is developing advanced high frequency HEMT device and MMIC technologies to address imminent applications at MMW frequencies above 80 GHz through 300 GHz. The improved device transport characteristics, high transconductance, and gain at very high frequencies will benefit next generation communications, radar, imaging and radiometer systems. In this paper, we status the development and production of 0.1 mum GaAs HEMT, 0.1 mum InP HEMT and sub 0.1 mum InP HEMT technologies for high frequency mmW circuits.
Although incremental advances in technology have enabled “conventional” silicon transistors to operate well into the GHz region, the demand for higher and higher frequency operation has driven innovations in materials, architectures, processes, and geometries that have resulted in completely novel devices that only inhabit the higher frequency domains. Possibly the most significant distinction between microwave transistors and their lower frequency counterparts is in the area of materials. Whereas low-frequency devices are fabricated almost exclusively in silicon, the use of relatively costly compound semiconductors, such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) and indium phosphide (InP), becomes economical at microwave frequencies due to their performance advantages over silicon. The drive to higher frequencies has also engendered highly sophisticated material configurations, such as the heterojunction, that have no low-frequency counterparts. In this chapter, we will give a brief overview of the main types of microwave transistor in use today, and how they can be modeled and applied in practical circuits. We will not dwell on the details of semiconductor physics or device fabrication as there are plenty of excellent texts on this subject for the interested reader to consult.
We report the progress of production InP MMICs for low cost, high performance applications at Northrop Grumman Space Technology (NGST). Both InP HEMT and HBT technologies are being developed on 100 mm diameter InP substrates and this development is leading to lower costs that will rival both GaAs-based MMICs including GaAs-based metamorphic technologies with superior performance. Two specific InP niche product areas will be discussed-high linearity InP HBT power amplifiers and high frequency W-band low noise amplifiers
In this paper we describe a unique InP HEMT MMIC process that has
been developed for the demonstration of the first ever G-band (140-220
GHz) amplifiers. This process combines enhanced InP HEMT profiles with a
70 nm T-gate process and a dry via etch process to achieve a high
maximum gain of greater than 8 dB at 200 GHz and the highest gain
amplifiers ever demonstrated (15 dB at 215 GHz)
We present results on an InP monolithic millimeter-wave integrated circuit (MMIC) amplifier having 10-dB gain at 235GHz. We designed this circuit and fabricated the chip in Northrop Grumman Space Technology's (NGST) 0.07-μm InP high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) process. Using a WR3 (220-325GHz) waveguide vector network analyzer system interfaced to waveguide wafer probes, we measured this chip on-wafer for S-parameters. To our knowledge, this is the first time a WR3 waveguide on-wafer measurement system has been used to measure gain in a MMIC amplifier above 230GHz.
This paper describes a high-performance indium phosphide (InP) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) amplifier, which has been developed for application in radioastronomy and imaging-array receivers. Implemented using coplanar waveguide, the six-stage amplifier exhibits 15 db gain, 10 dB input and output return loss, and low noise figure over the 180-205 GHz frequency range. Only one design pass was needed to obtain excellent agreement between the predicted and measured characteristics of the circuit, a unique achievement in this frequency band. The circuit is also the first 180-205 GHz amplifier designed for and successfully fabricated using TRW's standard 0.1-/spl mu/m InP HEMT process.
Production InP MMICs for Low Cost
- R Lai
R. Lai et al "Production InP MMICs for Low Cost, High Performance Applications" 2005 International InP and Related Materials Conf. Digest