Microwave/ Millimeter-Wave Devices and MMICs

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2015) | Viewed by 20086

Special Issue Editor

Division of Microelectronics, School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, College of Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Interests: compound semiconductor based high frequency devices; gallium nitride on silicon HEMTs; MMIC
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Microwave/millimeter-wave devices and MMICs were originally researched for the primary purpose of military applications. However, these devices have nowadays penetrated into wider areas of commercial applications, such as wireless communications, satellite communications, wireless local area networks, and collision avoidance automotive radars. The World’s first RF microwave GaAs MESFET and the MMIC amplifier were demonstrated in 1967 and 1975 respectively, and since then, various types of transistors (e.g., HEMTs, mHEMTs, HBTs, CMOS, etc.) have also managed to achieve cutoff frequencies in the microwave/millimeter-wave regime.  The advent of such high performance device technologies has been enabled by both the abilities to scale down device geometries and through the integration of new materials (such as SiGe, InP, GaN) into those transistors. To date, the maximum achievable frequency of operation is greater than 1 THz and a MMIC amplifier operating beyond 300GHz has been realized using 50nm gate-length InP HEMTs.  With aggressive device scaling, Si CMOS and MMICs have also pushed their operating frequencies into the millimeter/sub-millimeter-wave regimes.

This Special Issue will invite manuscripts on microwave/millimeter-wave devices and MMIC-related papers in areas, including, but not limited to, novel material and fabrication technologies, design, and simulations, electrical characterization techniques, and reliabilities.  The papers submitted may be original contributions or reviews.  After close to five decades since the report of the first microwave GaAs MESFET, we aim for this Special Issue to gather papers, which will provide us with insight on the evolution, as well as the current and future trends of microwave/millimeter-wave devices and MMICs.

Dr. Geok Ing Ng
Guest Editor

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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1148 KiB  
Article
High Electron Confinement under High Electric Field in RF GaN-on-Silicon HEMTs
by Farid Medjdoub, Riad Kabouche, Ezgi Dogmus, Astrid Linge and Malek Zegaoui
Electronics 2016, 5(1), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics5010012 - 18 Mar 2016
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5866
Abstract
We report on AlN/GaN high electron mobility transistors grown on silicon substrate with highly optimized electron confinement under a high electric field. The fabricated short devices (sub-10-nm barrier thickness with a gate length of 120 nm) using gate-to-drain distances below 2 µm deliver [...] Read more.
We report on AlN/GaN high electron mobility transistors grown on silicon substrate with highly optimized electron confinement under a high electric field. The fabricated short devices (sub-10-nm barrier thickness with a gate length of 120 nm) using gate-to-drain distances below 2 µm deliver a unique breakdown field close to 100 V/µm while offering high frequency performance. The low leakage current well below 1 µA/mm is achieved without using any gate dielectrics which typically degrade both the frequency performance and the device reliability. This achievement is mainly attributed to the optimization of material design and processing quality and paves the way for millimeter-wave devices operating at drain biases above 40 V, which would be only limited by the thermal dissipation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microwave/ Millimeter-Wave Devices and MMICs)
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304 KiB  
Article
Intermodulation Linearity in High-k/Metal Gate 28 nm RF CMOS Transistors
by Zhen Li, Guofu Niu, Qingqing Liang and Kimihiko Imura
Electronics 2015, 4(3), 614-622; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics4030614 - 11 Sep 2015
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 6214
Abstract
This paper presents experimental characterization, simulation, and Volterra series based analysis of intermodulation linearity on a high-k/metal gate 28 nm RF CMOS technology. A figure-of-merit is proposed to account for both VGS and VDS nonlinearity, and extracted from frequency dependence of measured IIP3. [...] Read more.
This paper presents experimental characterization, simulation, and Volterra series based analysis of intermodulation linearity on a high-k/metal gate 28 nm RF CMOS technology. A figure-of-merit is proposed to account for both VGS and VDS nonlinearity, and extracted from frequency dependence of measured IIP3. Implications to biasing current and voltage optimization for linearity are discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microwave/ Millimeter-Wave Devices and MMICs)
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1414 KiB  
Article
A 0.8–8 GHz Multi-Section Coupled Line Balun
by Srikanth Itapu, Mohammad Almalkawi and Vijay Devabhaktuni
Electronics 2015, 4(2), 274-282; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics4020274 - 30 Apr 2015
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 7526
Abstract
In this work, we propose a wideband multi-section transforming coupled-line balun using near equal length transmission line elements. The resulting design is realized by cascading several coupled-lines with minimal discontinuities. The multi-section Chebyshev matching optimizes bandwidth at the expense of passband ripple. The [...] Read more.
In this work, we propose a wideband multi-section transforming coupled-line balun using near equal length transmission line elements. The resulting design is realized by cascading several coupled-lines with minimal discontinuities. The multi-section Chebyshev matching optimizes bandwidth at the expense of passband ripple. The proposed design delivers good impedance matching and consistent 180° phase shift over 0.8–8 GHz frequency spectrum. Furthermore, the need for vias in conventional balun designs is relaxed by replacing the short-circuited (SC) terminal by its equivalent dual open-circuited (OC) element. The proposed design is simulated, fabricated, and measured. Both simulated and measured results are in a good agreement, and show an input port matching of below −9.7 dB over the design bandwidth, with a maximum phase and amplitude imbalance of 2.1° and 0.9 dB, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microwave/ Millimeter-Wave Devices and MMICs)
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