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


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.