ADVANCED GaAs HEMT TECHNOLOGIES FOR ULTRA LOW-NOISE AND MILLIMETER-WAVE POWER APPLICATIONS

摘要

A single-recess 0.15-μm gate length metamorphic HEMT (mHEMT) process on 100-mm GaAs substrates has been developed for ultra low-noise applications. X-band low-noise amplifier (LNA) ICs have been designed and fabricated using this 0.15-μm mHEMT technology. Low noise figure of 0.5 dB and high gain of greater than 31 dB from 7-10 GHz were measured on a current-shared mHEMT LNA MMIC that consumed only 42 mW DC power. We have also developed a dual-recess (DR) 0.15-μm pseudomorphic HEMT (pHEMT) process for power amplification applications at 30 to 50 GHz. Two state-of-the-art millimeter-wave MMICs using this DR 0.15-micron pHEMT technology have been successfully demonstrated. 2.5-Watt CW output power at 32 to 38 GHz were measured on a compact pHEMT MMIC of 7.44 mm~2 in chip area. A Q-band (41-46 GHz) MMIC that produced 2-Watt output power will also be reported in this paper.