The silicon-on-sapphire technology for RF integrated circuits: potential and limitations

摘要

The RF performances of both active and passive devices on the 0.5-μm silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) technology is comparatively investigated with a 0.5-μm bulk counterpart. Although the SOS technology shows better inductor quality factor (Q) of 3 to 4 times improvement, the usable frequency range lies only within about 2-6GHz. Further, the noise performance of the SOS MOSFET is in general inferior as compared to that of the bulk CMOS by 1dB. It degrades further at the post DC kink region due to the floating body effects. Design issues are discussed for RF integrated circuits implemented on SOS technology.