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Novel Shielded Coplanar Waveguides on GaN-on-Low Resistivity Si Substrates for MMIC Applications

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Eblabla, A 
Wallis, DJ 
Guiney, I 
Elgaid, K 

Abstract

Shielded-Elevated Coplanar Waveguides (SE-CPWs) with low loss have been successfully developed for the first time for RF GaN on low-resistivity silicon (LR-Si) substrates (σ < 40 Ω.cm). Transmission losses (S 21 ) of less than 0.4 dB/mm at X-band and better than 2 dB/mm at K-band with less than 20 dB return loss were exhibited by the developed SE-CPW, making them comparable in performance to those on traditional (semi-insulating) SI substrates. The developed waveguides use air-bridge technology to suspend CPW tracks above the HEMT GaN layer on LR-Si, directly above an additional thin layer of SiN and shielded ground planes. EM simulation was used to adjust structure parameters for performance optimization. In this work, we eliminated RF energy coupled into the substrate, paving the way for a cost-effective and higher integration GaN MMICs on LR-Si.

Description

Keywords

AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, attenuation constant and conformal mapping, coplanar waveguides (CPWs), low resistivity silicon substrates

Journal Title

IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1531-1309
1558-1764

Volume Title

25

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Sponsorship
This work was supported in part by the EPSRC III-V national center pump-priming scheme.